Dive Brief:
- A new report from Gemalto, a digital security company, found that over 707 million records worldwide were stolen last year due to data breaches.
- The records were stolen in 1,673 separate data breaches.
- Researchers say that number is actually 3.4% lower than the number of breaches that occurred in 2014.
Dive Insight:
In 2015, approximately 22 records were stolen every second, or 1.9 million every day.
The report also found that the most common place for data breaches is North America, accounting for 77% of them. Researchers noted that North America has more stringent data breach disclosure laws than many other countries, however, which may help account for the higher numbers.
The government sector was the most common type of victim, with a total of 307 million records stolen. The OPM breach and the breach of a Turkish government agency resulted in the theft of 77 million of those records alone.
Malicious outsiders accounted for the largest percentage of data breach incidents (58%), followed by accidental loss or exposure of data records (36%).
Though the slightly lower number is a good sign, the report also said the number is likely understated because companies often don’t know exactly how many records they’ve lost in a breach.
A recent global survey of CIOs found even encryption’s effectiveness as a security tool may be quickly eroding.
