Technology

2017 Data Breaches Keeps Up Record Pace with More Than 800 to Date

Paul Ausick

Published: July 21, 2017 11:08 am

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 9:54 am

The latest count from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reports that there have been 838 data breaches recorded this year through July 18 and that more than 14 million records have been exposed since the beginning of the year. The total is 28.9% higher than at the same time last year.

In 2016, the ITRC reported a record total of 1,093 breaches and at the current pace that total would rise to around 1,500 this year.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it had seized a Dark Web marketplace that trafficked in illegal drugs, counterfeit goods, and weapons among other illicit items. AlphaBay, operating anonymously on the Tor network, reportedly had 200,000 members and 40,000 vendors before the site was taken down. Hansa Market, another Dark Web marketplace, was also seized and shut down. AlphaBay was taken down earlier this month and the site’s founder, Alexandre Cazes, was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand. Cazes, a 25 year-old Canadian, committed suicide in jail shortly after he was arrested.

The business sector leads all segments in the number of records compromised so far in 2017 with more than 9.2 million exposed records in 453 incidents. That represents 54.1% of the incidents, and 65.1% of the exposed records so far this year.

The medical/health-care sector has posted 24.3% (204) of all 2017 data breaches. The number of records exposed in these breaches totals more than 3.1 million, or about 22% of the 2017 total.

The educational sector has experienced 90 data breaches since the beginning of the year. The sector accounts for 10.7% of all breaches for the year and more than 1 million exposed records, about 7.6% of the year’s total.

The government/military sector has been the victim of 44 data breaches to date in 2017, representing about 1.5% of the total number of records exposed and 5.3% of the incidents. More than 200,000 records have been compromised in the government/military sector.

The number of banking/credit/financial sector breaches now totals 47, some 5.6% of the total incidents reported so far this year. 526,000 records have been reported to be compromised in the incidents.

Since beginning to track data breaches in 2005, ITRC had counted 7,736 breaches through July 18, 2017, involving more than 902 million records.