4.55bn records compromised in data breaches in 1H18

A staggering 4.55 billion customer records were compromised or exposed in data breaches during the first half of 2018, with social media incidents accounting for more than half of total records breached, research from Gemalto indicates.

The digital security company said the number of compromised or exposed records climbed 133% over the same period last year, but there was a slight decline in the total number of data breaches, with 945 detected during 1H18.

During the six-month period, on average more than 25 million records were compromised or exposed every day.

Just six social media breaches, including the high-profile Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal, accounted for over 56% of total compromised records. But of the total number of data breaches, 189 had an unknown number of compromised data records.

But health care remains the most targeted industry, and there was an increase in the number of incidents in all sectors apart from government, professional services, retail and technology.

Only 1% of the breached records were protected by encryption, even though compromised data included sensitive information such as medical, credit card and financial data.

The report also found that identity theft remains the leading type of data breach, and malicious outsiders continue to account for the largest percentage of breaches (56%). The number of records and incidents involved in malicious insider attacks fell by 50% year-on-year.

“Obviously, this year social media has been the top industry and threat vector for the compromise of personal data, a trend we can expect to continue with more and more sectors leveraging these platforms to reach key audiences, especially political teams gearing up for major elections,” said Gemalto VP and CTO for Data Protection Jason Hart.

“We also expect to see more data breaches reported by European Union countries bound by the new General Data Protection Regulation and in Australia with the new Notifiable Data Breaches law. We should be careful not to misconstrue this as an increase in overall incidents in these areas but rather as a more accurate reflection of what is actually going on.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Nmedia

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