14 DAY TRIAL // In the first six months of 2015, Gemalto, a company that provides digital security products, estimates that 888 data breaches have taken place around the world, exposing no less than 246 million records.
While the numbers look quite large, comparing the current statistics with the same period of 2014, Gemalto observed a rise of 10% in data breach incidents, but also noted that the exposed information decreased by 41%.
Nevertheless, in 50% out of the 888 reported data breaches, companies said they weren't able to estimate the amount of lost data, reporting unknown losses to law enforcement agencies.
Big incidents make up for most of the lost data
Despite the large number of breaches, big incidents accounted for most of the lost data, the Top 10 breaches making up for 82% of all the total lost records.
2015's top incidents include Anthem Insurance, the health insurance provider where 78.8 million records were lost, the Turkish General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs where 50 million records were lost, the US Office of Personnel Management where 21 million records were lost, Russia's Topface online dating portal where 20 million records were lost, and India's Gaana.com music streaming service where 10 million records were also lost.
Top affected industries were healthcare, government agencies, and the technology sector, followed by retail, and education.
Hackers were responsible for most data breach incidents
62% of all the breaches were carried out by malicious outsiders, while accidents accounted for 22% of all the incidents, followed by malicious insiders (12%), hacktivism (2%), and state-sponsored attacks (2%).
472 (53%) of all the data breaches were basic identity theft operations, followed by breaches that resulted in access to financial data (22%), personal details (11%), and (Web, service) account information (11%).
Most incidents occurred in North America (707 incidents, 80%), with most of them being recorded in the US (671 incidents).
Europe was the second most "breached" continent with 94 incidents accounting for 10% of all breaches, while the UK ranked second behind the US with 63 recorded data breaches.
If you need more in-depth details, the full Gemalto First Half 2015 Breach Level Index report is available for download.
