Data Breaches Become Worse as 7.9 Billion Records Get Exposed in the First Nine Months of 2019

• This is an increase of 112% in total records exposed over the same period in 2018.
• 1,692 out of 5,183 breaches were reported only in the U.S.

Breach activity in 2019 has risen to a new level, exposing millions of records in less than 10 months.

Insight on number of breaches

• According to Risk Based Security’s Q3 2019 Data Breach QuickView Report, the total number of breaches has increased by 33.3% over last year so far.
• The first nine months of 2019 recorded a total of 5,183 breaches exposing nearly 7.9 billion records. This is an increase of 112% in total records exposed over the same period in 2018.
• 1,692 out of 5,183 breaches were reported only in the U.S.
• Some 3.1 billion of the exposed records came from six breaches reported between July 1 and September 30, 2019.

Factors and breached organizations

• The economic sector, medical services, retailers and public entities experience the most breaches.
• Over 6 billion records exposed during the span of nine months occurred due to misconfigured databases, backups, endpoints and services. The availability of exploit tools coupled with vulnerability fueled the growth in the number of records compromised.

Conclusion

With the number of publicly disclosed events showing no signs of slowing down, organizations across the globe should make extra efforts on preemptively mitigating security risks and minimizing a breach’s impact rather than simply relying on defensive solutions alone.