Data breaches up 15% in H1 – Gemalto

Data breaches increased 15 percent in the first six months of 2016 compared to the last six months of 2015, according to a report by Gemalto. Worldwide, there were 974 reported data breaches and more than 554 million compromised data records in H1, compared to 844 data breaches and 424 million compromised data records in the previous six months. In addition, 52 percent of the data breaches in the first half did not disclose the number of compromised records at the time they were reported.
 
More than 4.8 billion data records have been exposed since 2013 when a Gemalto index began benchmarking publicly disclosed data breaches. For the first six months, identity theft was the leading type of data breach, accounting for 64 percent of all data breaches, up from 53 percent in the previous six months.
 
Malicious outsiders were the leading source of data breaches, accounting for 69 percent of breaches, up from 56 percent in the previous six months. In terms of top three geographic regions for reported data breaches, 79 percent were in North America, 9 percent were in Europe, and 8 percent were in Asia-Pacific.

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