Technology
2016 Data Breaches 10% Higher Than a Year Ago
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:
Since beginning to track data breaches in 2005, ITRC had counted 6,079 breaches through April 18, 2016, involving more than 862 million records.
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