14 DAY TRIAL // A report highlighting the top data breach incidents in the world and the number of records stolen from the targeted organizations shows that, on average, about 23 data records were lost or stolen every second in Q2 2014.
The report comes from data protection company SafeNet and relies on publicly available information gathered through their Breach Level Index tool.
According to this information, in Q2 2014, at least 1,355 records were exposed every minute, and simple math shows a daily figure of 1,951,724 records.
As for the top five most significant computer system breaches, three of them occurred in the United States, the eBay incident being by far the one impacting the largest number of individuals, with details on 145 million stolen. It is worth noting that the total amount of data exposed reaches 175,655,228 million.
It appears that in some cases the information was encrypted, but only in 10 of the 237 reported incidents. Also on the downside, only in two cases the details could not be used by the intruders thanks to strong encryption key management or authentication solutions.
The second most damaging intrusion in the world in the second quarter of 2014 targeted the systems of City of Verden in Germany, from where 18 million email addresses and passwords were exfiltrated; there is evidence that the information was used for malicious purposes.
Third on the list is the attack against AOL, which the company acknowledged towards the end of April and which impacted on a total number of 2 million users.
The report provides a break-down of the incidents per industry and reveals that the retail sector was the most affected, accounting for 83% of the intrusions.
Runners-up were government organizations, with 11% of data stolen. “Most specifically the Department of Veteran’s Administration has had the most breach incidents of any government agency with three separate incidents each accounting for the loss of over 1,000 records,” say SafeNet’s findings.
Malicious activity was the cause of most damage, being responsible for 56% of the cases. Accidental loss of information followed with 29%, while malicious insiders accounted for 12%.
At the end of the list there are state-sponsored attacks (2%) and actions of hacktivists (less than 1%).
SafeNet says that there were 237 breaches worldwide in the second quarter of 2014, a number that is much lower than the recordings of the first quarter, when 559 data loss incidents were reported, leading to more than 375 million customer records being stolen or lost.