More than 910 data breaches took place courtesy of hackers, malware and ransomware through the first six months of this year. Scary, eh? How to stop such attacks is the subject of WRAL TechWire’s “Hackers, Malware, Ransomware & You” event. You should be there.
Check out the graphic with this post from research firm Gemalto about the plague of breaches.
And this total is just through June 30, so the Equifax and SEC hacks aren’t included. And each was a major attack.
If Equifax and the SEC can be hacked, how can your firm stave off an assault?
“Compared to the last six months of 2016, the number of lost, stolen or compromised records increased by a staggering 164%,” Gemalto reports.
“.A large portion came from the 22 largest data breaches, each involving more than one million compromised records. Of the 918 data breaches more than 500 (59% of all breaches) had an unknown or unaccounted number of compromised data records.”
Here are some highlights from the report:
- Primary Sources of Data Breaches
Malicious outsiders made up the largest percentage of data breaches (74%), an increase of 23%. However, this source accounted for only 13% of all stolen, compromised or lost records. While malicious insider attacks only made up 8% of all breaches, the amount of records compromised was 20 million up from 500,000 an increase of over 4,114% from the previous six months.
- Leading Types of Data Breaches
For the first six months of 2017, identity theft was the leading type of data breach in terms of incident, accounting for 74% of all data breaches, up 49% from the previous semester. The number of records compromised in identity theft breaches increased by 255%. The most significant shift was the nuisance category of data breaches representing 81% of all lost, stolen or compromised records. However, in terms of the number of incidents, nuisance type attacks were only slightly over 1% of all data breaches. The number of compromised records from account access attacks declined by 46%, after a significant spike in the 2016 BLI full year report.
- Biggest Industries Affected by Data Breaches
Most of the industries the Breach Level Index tracks had more than a 100% increase in the number of compromised, stolen or lost records. Education witnessed one of the largest increases in breaches up by 103% with an increase of over 4,000% in the number of records. This is the result of a malicious insider attack compromising millions of records from one of China’s largest comprehensive private educational companies. Healthcare had a relatively similar amount of breaches compared to the last six months of 2016, but stolen, lost or compromised records increased 423%. The U.K’s National Health Service was one of the top five breaches in the first half with over 26 million compromised records. Financial services, government and entertainment were also industries that experienced a significant jump in the number of breached records, with entertainment breach incidents increasing 220% in the first six months of 2017.
WTW event
WRAL TechWire’s “Hackers, Malware, Ransomware & You” event is today in RTP.
This cyber plague is the focus of our event which will feature a Q&A “fireside chat” with Jim Boyles, a top cybersecurity executive from IBM, and two panel discussions involving eight thought leaders from across North Carolina.
The first panel will focus on “What’s Missing from Your Data Security Programs?”
Moderator is Sophia Bahhur, Treasury Management Sales Consultant at Wells Fargo.
The second will discuss challenges and opportunities for workforce development as companies gear up to add more resources to fight the cyberwar.
Moderator is Marc Montoro, General Manager, Eastern NC NorthState Technology Solutions
Tickets are on sale now.
Be there – or be vulnerable.
