According to Gemalto, close to two billion records were stolen or lost during the first half of 2017, more than that of all of 2016.
These findings were released in the security firm's latest Breach Level Index which represents a global database of public data breach incidents.
918 security incidents were recorded during the first six months of 2017, amounting to 1.9 billion compromised records. This number has increased significantly since last year's 1.4 billion compromised records. That number is expected to grow substantially over the next several months.
While this number is staggering, what's even more unsettling is that the number could be even higher than 1.9 billion. This is because over half (52%) of incidents have an unknown or unreported number of compromised records.
The UK was second only to the US in terms of the number of incidents reported (40), with over 280 million records compromised. This represents a 130% increase from the second half of 2016.
Most of these records came from the 26 million record breach at the National Health Service (NHS).
While the number of records compromised increased in the UK in 2017, the number fell from 43 to 40 compared to last year, showing there is some effort being made throughout organizations to improve cybersecurity posture.
This is good news considering the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) deadline is just around the corner. This new regulation is required for all organizations that collect, store, and process data on citizens within the European Union. GDPR headlines focus on the potentially huge fines “up to €20 Million, or in the case of an undertaking, up to 4 % of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher” for the worst infringements of the regulation.
Read this article on InfoSecurity Magazine