Talk about scary Halloween tales. The number captured in the 2017 ITRC Breach Report now totals 1,103, an increase of 22.4% over last year’s record pace for the same period (901).
As of October 18, the breach total also represents 171,588,466 reported exposed records, according to the report from the San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center and Providence, R.I.-based CyberScout (formerly IDT911). The ITRC report also revealed the breach total already surpassed the number of U.S. data breaches tracked for all of 2016, which hit an all-time record high of 1,093. Last year also showed 36,601,939 reported records exposed.
“This year can easily claim the title for Year of the Breach,” the ITRC suggested. “Whether it’s more breaches or better reporting by the entities themselves and various state government agencies, it’s hard to say. The fact remains that the number of breaches has increased by 243% over the number of breaches first tracked in 2005 (321).”
With 23 breaches recently added to the ITRC Breach Stats Report, the five industry sectors break down (ITRC Data Breach Category Summary) now stands at:
- Business = 52.3%
- Medical/Healthcare= 27.2%
- Educational = 9.3%
- Banking/Credit/Financial = 6.3%
- Government = 4.8%
The banking/credit/financial industry showed a 62.8% increase in the number of breaches year-over-year from 43 to 70. The total number of reported records exposed in the banking/credit/financial industry so far in 2017 is 2,908,580 or 1.7% of the total.
