After collecting publicly available information about worldwide data breaches, the Breach Level Index (BLI) showed that there were over 183 million data records lost or stolen from July through September 2014.
As our new infographic shows, that means there were nearly 2 million records lost or stolen every day. That’s 23 records a second. Of the 320 reported breaches in Q3, 46% involved identity theft, making it the #1 type of data breach.
The quarter reaffirmed that cyber attackers are unrelentingly targeting valuable financial and personally identifiable information, as the financial services industry experienced 42% of the third quarter breaches and the retail industry experienced 31%.
The financial services industry was hit particularly hard due to the JPMorgan Chase breach, in which 76 million data records — including customer names, email addresses, phone numbers and addresses — were stolen, and the breach was given a 10.0 risk score by the Breach Level Index. Thankfully, financial records were not obtained.
For more information and to keep track of the latest data breaches, visit breachlevelindex.com.
