Technology

Data Breaches Up 18% to Date in 2016

Paul Ausick

Published: May 4, 2016 12:20 pm

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 9:52 am

The latest count from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reports that there have been 348 data breaches recorded this year through May 3, 2016, and that more than 11.36 million records have been exposed since the beginning of the year. The total number of reported breaches increased by 33 compared to the prior week.

Payroll processing firm Automatic Data Processing Inc. (NASDAQ: ADP) reported on Tuesday that tax and salary data on employees of “a small number” of ADP’s clients had been stolen. The company said the breach was the result of its clients mistakenly publishing unique access codes to employees’ online accounts. According to Brian Krebs at KrebsOnSecurity, ADP said it will now monitor the web, checking for others of its customers who might have made the same publishing mistake.

The number of breaches in 2015 totaled 781, just two shy of the record 783 breaches that ITRC tracked in 2014. The 348 data breaches reported so far for 2016 are 18% more 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 14 data breaches so far this year, representing about 45.3% of the total number of records exposed and 4% 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 32.8% (114) of all data breaches to date this year. The number of records exposed in these breaches totaled more than 3.9 million, or about 34.6% of the total so far in 2016.
• The business sector accounts for more than 1.9 million exposed records in 172 incidents. That represents 49.4% of the incidents and 17.3% of the exposed records.
• The number of banking/credit/financial breaches totals eight for the year-to-date and involves nearly 5,000 records, some 2.3% of the total number of breaches and less than 0.1% of the records exposed.
• The educational sector has seen 40 data breaches in 2016. The sector accounts for 11.5% of all breaches for the year and nearly 320,000 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.