4.5 Billion Data Records Compromised
According to digital security company Gemalto's 2018 Breach Level Index Report, more than 4.5 billion data records were compromised in the first half of this year, a 133 percent increase over last year. That equals more than 25 million data records lost or stolen per day, one-million every hour, over 17,000 every minute, and 291 every second. Not surprising is that the number one source of data breaches was "malicious outside actors," meaning external attackers. Those attacks encompassed more than 3.6 billion data records, or 80 percent of the total from the first half of 2018. The second most frequent cause of compromised data was accidental, which dropped by 47 percent from over 1.6 billion records in the 2017 report to 879 million in 2018. Human mistakes still accounted for 318 out of the 945 total incidents reported this year. Next, 7 percent of data breaches were the result of malicious insiders stealing information from a company, and 2 percent of breaches w