Data breaches in 2017 totally eclipse 2016 - already

More data stolen in the first six months of 2017 than all of 2016

1.9 billion records have been leaked or stolen in the first half of 2017: more than throughout the entire previous year (1.4 billion), and more than 160 per cent more than the second half of 2016.

Gemalto's Breach Level Index (BLI), which analyses security breaches, shows that more than 10.5 million records were stolen every day in the January-June period. There were 918 recorded breaches over the period, with more than 1 million records were stolen in 22 cases - and in more than 500 breaches, the number of records was not recorded; the total number stolen could be much higher. This is expected to change as governments enact regulations to improve data breach transparency.

Encryption and multi-factor authentication is something that the IT industry must get better at. Gemalto reports that encryption was used in fewer than five per cent of cases: just 42 of the 918 breaches.

Although many breaches were caused by external threat actors (74 per cent), they accounted for only 13 per cent of lost or stolen records. Malicious insiders were responsible for 71 incidents (eight per cent), but accidental loss by employees led to even more: 166 incidents, or 18 per cent of the total. These were responsible for 86 per cent of the 1.9 billion lost or stolen records; mostly due to massive breaches in River City Media (1.34 billion records) and the NHS (26 million records).

Geographically, Europe tied for second place with APAC in the number of incidents affecting it - although that was still only five per cent of the total (49 events, of which 40 were in the UK). North America traditionally makes up the highest proportion of breaches, and 88 per cent (808) of those in this edition of the BLI hit the region. This might change with the introduction of the GDPR, which will force companies dealing with European data to publicly acknowledge if they have been breached.

Of the incidents in the UK, half involved a malicious outsider and 38 per cent were due to accidental loss.