In the first half of this year, 245.9 million records were breached due to cyberattacks, according to the 2015 First Half Review Findings from the Breach Level Index.
Here are 10 things to know about data breaches in the first half of 2015.
1. The top 10 breaches accounted for 82 percent of total records compromised.
2. In the first half of this year, there have been 888 breach incidents thus far.
3. In half of these breaches, the number of compromised records was unknown.
4. Every day records were lost or stolen at a rate of 1.3 million. Every hour, 56,611 records were lost or stolen. Every minute, 943 records were compromised, and 16 records were lost or stolen per second.
5. The Anthem Blue Cross breach, which compromised 78.8 million records, was the largest breach in the first half of this year.
6. The majority of breaches, 62 percent, were caused by malicious outsiders. Other breach causes include:
• Accidental loss: 22 percent
• Malicious insider: 12 percent
• Hacktivist: 2 percent
• State sponsored: 2 percent
7. The types of breaches included:
• Identity theft: 53 percent
• Financial access: 22 percent
• Existential data: 11 percent
• Account access: 11 percent
• Nuisance: 3 percent
8. Healthcare accounted for the 21.1 percent (187) of total breaches in the first half of this year. A total of 84.4 million data records were lost by the healthcare industry.
9. Here is the number of records breached by industry:
• Healthcare: 34 percent
• Government: 31 percent
• Technology: 15 percent
• Retail: 8 percent
• Education: 6 percent
• Other: 5 percent
• Financial: 1 percent
10. North America accounted for 80 percent of all data breach incidents in the first half of 2015, with 671 incidents occurring in the United States.