Break Down of the 2018 Breach Level Index Stats:
• 18,525,816 records compromised every day
• 771,909 records compromised every hour
• 12,865 records compromised every minute
• 214 records compromised every second
Data breaches had a field day in 2018. According to the Breach Level Iindex, a database compiled by Gemalto to track publicly reported data breaches disclosed in news media reports, 2018 is one of the only years where more than two billion records were compromised in publicly disclosed data breaches. The only other year to do so was 2013 due to the exposure of all three billion Yahoo users’ accounts.
Gemalto has analyzed the Breach Level Index during the first half of 2018 and the findings are truly staggering. In just six months, the system tracked more than 3.3 billion breached data files. This figure represents a 72 percent increase over the first half of 2017.
The Breach Level Index didn’t contain as many reported incidents in the first half of 2018 as it did over the same period last year with 944 reported security events during the reporting period compared to 1,162 breaches reported in the first half of 2017.
The Main Trends From the 2018 Report:
• Identity theft yet again the top data breach type: Identity theft was responsible for nearly four billion records compromised in the first half of the year, which represents growth of more than a thousand percent compared to the previous year. During the same time frame, the number of incidents involving identity theft decreased by a quarter.
• Malicious outsiders and accidental loss the most prevalent sources of data breach: The number of events involving malicious outsiders accounted for 56 percent and 34 percent of all data breaches, respectively.
• Social media weathered the greatest number of compromised records: Facebook wasn’t the only social giant that suffered a data breach in the first half of 2018. Twitter also experienced a security incident where a software glitch potentially exposed the login credentials of its 330 million users. In total, data breaches compromised 2.5 billion records stored by social media giants.
• Incidents in healthcare and financial services declined: The number of compromised files and data breaches decreased for both healthcare and financial services. These declines at least in part reflected the introduction of new national regulations that help regulate health data and financial transactions.
• North America led the way in publicly disclosed data breaches: This region represented more than 97 percent of data records compromised in the first half of 2018. In total, there were 559 events in the region, a number which represented 59 percent of all data breaches globally in the first half of 2018.
New Data Privacy Regulations Take Effect:
In the wake of new data protection regulations, reporting of security incidents is on the rise. Following the passage of the Australian Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Act, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) received 305 data breach notifications by the end of the second quarter of 2018. This number is nearly triple the amount of the number submitted to the OAIC for the entire 2016-2017 fiscal year. Such growth in data breach reporting will likely continue through the rest of 2018 and beyond under GDPR and New York’s Cybersecurity Requirements for Financial Services Companies.
If you are interested in learning more about Gemalto’s H1 2018 Breach Level Index findings, you can check out the full report or the infographic for a quick snapshot of the stats.
