Technology

2016 Data Breaches 10% Higher Than a Year Ago

Paul Ausick

Published: April 21, 2016 8:50 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 10:30 am

The latest count from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reports that there has been a total of 269 data breaches recorded through April 19, 2016, and that more than 11.27 million records have been exposed since the beginning of the year. The total number of reported breaches increased by 22 compared to the prior week.

A breach totaling 44,000 customer records was revealed last week by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The breach occurred in February when an employee who was leaving the agency “inadvertently and without malicious intent” downloaded the data to a personal storage device before leaving. The FDIC said its investigation “does not indicate that any sensitive information has been disseminated or compromised.”

The number of breaches in 2015 totaled 781, just two shy of the record 783 breaches that ITRC tracked in 2014. The 269 data breaches reported so far for 2016 are more than 10% higher than the number reported for the same period last year. A total of more than 169 million records were exposed in 2015.

Here’s a rundown of the ITRC report for last week:

• The government/military sector retained the lead in the number of records exposed in 2016. The sector has suffered 13 data breaches so far this year, representing about 45.7% of the total number of records exposed and 4.8% of the incidents. More than 5.1 million records have been compromised in the government/military sector to date in 2016.
• The medical/health care sector has posted 34.6% (93) of all data breaches to date this year. The number of records exposed in these breaches totaled nearly 3.9 million, or about 34.4% of the total so far in 2016.
• The business sector accounts for more than 1.9 million exposed records in 127 incidents. That represents 47.2% of the incidents, and 17.1% of the exposed records.
• The number of banking/credit/financial breaches totals six for the year to date and involves more than 4,000 records, some 2.2% of the total number of breaches and less than 0.1% of the records exposed.
• The educational sector has seen 30 data breaches in 2016. The sector accounts for 11.2% of all breaches for the year and more than 316,000 exposed records, about 2.8% of the total so far this year.

Since beginning to track data breaches in 2005, ITRC had counted 6,079 breaches through April 18, 2016, involving more than 862 million records.