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The number of data breaches in 2019 is boggling the mind as approximately 4,000 data breaches have exposed 4.1 billion consumer records in just the first six months of this year. This number of breaches has increased by more than 50 percent compared to 2018.

The report published by Risk Based Security titled “The 2019 MidYear QuickView Data Breach” found that the first six months of 2019 have seen 3,816 data breaches, exposing a staggering 4.1 billion records compromised. 3.2 billion of those records were exposed by just eight breaches and all were attributable to malicious actors finding misconfigured databases.

Executive Vice President of Risk Based Security, Inga Goddijn pointed out “Looking over the first six months of 2019, it is hard to be optimistic on the outlook for the year. The number of breaches is up and the number of records exposed remains stubbornly high. Despite best efforts and awareness among business leaders and defenders, data breaches continue to take place at an alarming rate.”

Though, the majority of breaches reported this year had a moderate to low severity score, the report claims and divulged 10,000 or fewer records. It is significant to note because many businesses mistakenly assume that they are too small to be in the range of malicious actors. But the fact is it’s all about the data, and small businesses often have less well-protected data stores.

Business Need to Contemplate When it Comes to Data Protection

At present, email addresses accounting for 70 percent and passwords with 64 percent are at the top of the most pilfered list, following the names (23 percent) and Social Security numbers and credit cards (11 percent each), according to the report.

Email marketing company Verifications.io, for instance, whose misconfigured database exposed around 982 million names, addresses, and Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram accounts. And the information associated with the breach includes email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, fax numbers, genders, IP addresses, and personal mortgage amounts.

The First American Financial Corporation data breach case. According to the report, 885 million records were exposed at First American, including real estate closing transaction records that contained names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, email and physical addresses, driver’s license images, banking details, and mortgage lender names and loan numbers.

Regardless of concerns raised in the cybersecurity community about insider threats, 89 percent of breaches are the result of outside attacks. This is largely being breached because insiders fail to properly handle or secure the information. The report revealed that 149 of the 3,813 incidents reported this year, involved misconfigured databases and services, and resulting in the exposure of over 3.2 billion records.

Healthcare Faced Most Breaches in 2019 So Far

Healthcare services experienced the highest number of breaches this year so far, with 224 breaches, according to Risk Based Security report. Next, Retail (199 breaches), Finance/Insurance (183 breaches), Government and Technology (160 each), and Education (99 breaches) took place. In the region-wise, the United States reported the largest number of breaches, nearly 1,132, and 353 were non-U.S.