14 DAY TRIAL // It could be said that 2014 was the year of data breaches, considering the recorded amount of data leaked to unauthorized individuals, and this is reflected in an annual report from a company that centralizes data breach information.
The figures show a 49% increase of the attacks compared to the previous year and 78% more records having been stolen or lost.
The report comes from the Breach Level Index (BLI), a service which was developed by SafeNet but passed into the portfolio of Gemalto when the company was acquired in August 2014 for $890 / €781.5 million.
According to the information from BLI, the data loss was the result of more than 1,500 attacks carried out across the globe. Home Depot (109 million records), JPMorgan Chase (83 million records) and eBay (145 million records) were the companies that lost client details with a higher risk score.
However, financial institutions in South Korea (104 million) and Chinese retailer AliExpress (30 million records) are also on the list of the largest contributors. The most prevalent reason for perpetrating the attacks was identity theft.
“Identity theft could lead to the opening of new fraudulent credit accounts, creating false identities for criminal enterprises, or a host of other serious crimes. As data breaches become more personal, we're starting to see that the universe of risk exposure for the average person is expanding,” said Tsion Gonen, vice-president of Strategy for Identity and Data Protection at Gemalto.