The latest count from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reports that there have been 516 data breaches recorded this year through April 25 and that nearly 9.3 million records have been exposed since the beginning of the year. The total represents a 35% increase in the number of breaches to date compared with 2016.
In 2016, the ITRC reported a record total of 1,093 breaches and at the current pace that total could rise to around 1,500 in 2017.
The state attorney general of Maryland last week posted 327 reported data breaches to date in 2017. Most involved relatively small numbers of exposed records, but two of the breaches accounted for about 9,000 exposed records each.
The business sector leads all sectors in the number of records compromised so far in 2017, with nearly 7.5 million exposed records in 285 incidents. That represents 55.2% of the incidents and nearly 81% of the exposed records so far this year.
The medical/health care sector has posted 22.9% (118) of all data breaches. The number of records exposed in these breaches totaled tops 1.5 million, or about 17% of the 2017 total.
The government/military sector has suffered 27 data breaches to date in 2017, representing about 2% of the total number of records exposed and 5.2% of the incidents. More than 188,000 records have been compromised in this sector.
The educational sector has experienced 68 data breaches since the beginning of the year. The sector accounts for 13.2% of all breaches for the year and more than 41,000 exposed records, about 0.4% of the year’s total.
The number of banking/credit/financial sector breaches now totals 18, some 3.5% of the total incidents reported so far this year. About 20,000 records have been reported to be compromised in the incidents.
Since beginning to track data breaches in 2005, ITRC had counted 7,415 breaches through April 25, 2017, involving nearly 900 million records.
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