INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Enterprise Security
“More than nine
billion data
records have
been exposed
since 2013 when
the index began
benchmarking
publicly
disclosed data
breaches.”
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
powered by
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 UK’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.
Geographic Distribution of
Data Breaches
Jason Hart, Vice President and Chief
Technology Officer for Data Protection
at Gemalto. “We can expect that
number to grow significantly, especially
as government regulations in the US,
Europe and elsewhere enact laws to
protect the privacy and data of their
constituents by associating a monetary
value to improperly securing data.
Security is no longer a reactive measure
but an expectation from companies
and consumers.”
Primary Sources of Data Breaches
Malicious outsiders made up the largest
percentage of data breaches (74%), an
increase of 23%. However, this source
64
INTELLIGENTCIO
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
North America still makes up the
majority of all breaches and the number
of compromised records, both above
86%. The number of breaches in
North America increased by 23% with
the number of records compromised
skyrocketing by 201%. Traditionally,
North America has always had the
largest number of publicly disclosed
breaches and associated record
numbers, although this is poised to
change in 2018 when global data
privacy regulations like the European
General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) and Australia’s Privacy
Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches)
Act are enforced. Europe currently only
had 49 reported data breaches (5% of
all breaches), which is a 35% decline
from the previous six months. n
“During the
first six months
of 2017, more
than 10 million
records were
compromised
or exposed
every day.”
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