Technology

2016 Data Breaches Added 5 Million Exposed Records Last Week

Paul Ausick

Published: April 15, 2016 1:35 pm

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 10:42 am

The latest count from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reports that a total of 247 data breaches have been recorded through April 12, 2016, and that more than 11.25 million records have been exposed since the beginning of the year. The total number of reported breaches increased by 20 compared to the prior week.

A February theft of a laptop computer and several hard drives from a federal office building in the state of Washington in February was just added to the ITRC list. The stolen goods may have contained as many as 5 million names and Social Security numbers. Two individuals have been arrested, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.

The number of breaches in 2015 totaled 781, just two shy of the record 783 breaches that ITRC tracked in 2014. The 247 data breaches reported so far for 2016 are more than 12% 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 took over the lead in the number of records exposed in 2016 following the addition of 5 million attributed to the Office of Child Support Enforcement in Olympia, Wash. The sector has suffered 11 data breaches so far this year, representing about 45.7% of the total number of records exposed and 4.5% 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 34.4% (90) 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 114 incidents. That represents 46.2% 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 2.4% of the total number of breaches and less than 0.1% of the records exposed.
• The educational sector has seen 26 data breaches in 2016. The sector accounts for 10.5% of all breaches for the year and more than 313,000 exposed records, about 2.8% of the total so far this year.

Since beginning to track data breaches in 2005, ITRC had counted 5,810 breaches through December 2015, involving nearly 848 million records.