There were 918 data breaches in early 2017, up 30% from the previous half year, and as a result 1.9 billion records were compromised, a 164% increase.
Yet another study shows that organizations are failing to deploy adequate security tools and processes to prevent data breaches, many of which are caused by accidental loss or exposure of data. The report notes that even relatively small numbers of breaches can result in enormous losses of data records. The Gemalto study, ” 2017 Poor Internal Security Practices Take a Toll,” examined the first half of this year. “The first half of 2017 had its share of major breaches, and the numbers are not encouraging when compared with previous data,” the report said. “During the first half of 2017, there were 918 data breaches worldwide, compared with 815 in the last six months of 2016. That represents a 30 percent increase.” Of those, identity theft accounted for 75 percent of data breaches, an increase of 49 percent compared to the previous six months. The findings are based on data from security firm Gemalto’s breach level index (BLI) for the first half of 2017, which tracks data breaches and measures their severity based on multiple dimensions, including the number of records compromised, the type of data, the source of the breach, how the data was used, and whether or not the data was encrypted.
