Technology

Data Breaches Rise 16% to Date in 2016

Paul Ausick

Published: July 8, 2016 11:20 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 5:56 am

The latest count from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) indicates that there have been 507 data breaches recorded this year, through July 5, 2016, and that more than 12.8 million records have been exposed since the beginning of the year. The total number of reported breaches increased by seven since ITRC’s last report.

On Thursday, Wendy’s Co. (NASDAQ: WEN) revealed store locations that may have been affected by malware attacks the company reported in February and June of this year. The attack was designed to steal credit and debit card data, and it came to light when banks and credit unions reported unusually high instances of debit card fraud. The attacks began last year and at least 1,025 locations were victimized ,according data security website KrebsOnSecurity. Wendy’s has provided a list of stores known to have been victims of the attack.

The number of breaches in 2015 totaled 781, just two shy of the record 783 breaches that ITRC tracked in 2014. The 507 data breaches reported so far for 2016 are 16% more than the number reported (436) 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 29 data breaches so far this year, representing about 44% of the total number of records exposed and 5.7% of the incidents. More than 5.6 million records have been compromised in the sector to date in 2016.
• The business sector accounts for more than 2.4 million exposed records in 234 incidents. That represents 46.2% of the incidents and 19% of the exposed records.
• The medical/health care sector has posted 33.7% (171) of all data breaches to date this year. The number of records exposed in these breaches totaled nearly 4.4 million, or about 33.7% of the total so far in 2016.
• The number of banking/credit/financial breaches totals 15 for the year to date and involves more than 5,200 records, some 3% of the total number of breaches and less than 0.1% of the records exposed.
• The educational sector has seen 58 data breaches in 2016. The sector accounts for 11.4% of all breaches for the year and more than 366,000 exposed records, about 2.9% of the total so far this year.

Since beginning to track data breaches in 2005, ITRC had counted 6,318 breaches through June 28, 2016, involving more than 864 million records.