2017 Data Breaches Up 24% Year Over Year to 936 Incidents

By Paul Ausick Updated Jan 12, 8:45AM EST · Published Aug 26, 8:45AM EDT

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2017 Data Breaches Up 24% Year Over Year to 936 Incidents — © Thinkstock

The latest count from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reports that there have been 936 data breaches recorded this year through August 22 and that about 19 million records have been exposed since the beginning of the year. The incident total is 24% 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 could rise to around 1,500 in 2017.

A spear-phishing attack aimed at travelers recently has been uncovered by researchers at FireEye. When a hotel guest connects to the hotel Wi-Fi network, the attacker spoofs the hotel’s network to steal personally identifiable information, such as a guest’s password and login credentials. Security website Komando.com recommends that hotel guests take a few precautions:

Ask at the desk for the hotel’s network name
Be skeptical of links
Avoid certain websites
Stay encrypted
Use a VPN

Visit Komando.com for more details.

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The business sector leads them all in the number of records compromised so far in 2017, with more than 11 million exposed records in 499 incidents. That represents 53.3% of the incidents and 58% of the exposed records so far this year.

The medical/health care sector has posted 25.4% (238) of all 2017 data breaches. The number of records exposed in these breaches totals over 3.8 million, or about 20.1% of the 2017 total.

The educational sector has experienced 97 data breaches since the beginning of the year. The sector accounts for 10.4% of all breaches for the year and more than 1.1 million exposed records, about 5.9% of the year’s total.

The government/military sector has suffered 45 data breaches to date in 2017, representing about 1.4% of the total number of records exposed and 4.8% of the incidents. More than 250,000 records have been compromised in the government/military sector.

The number of banking/credit/financial sector breaches now totals 57, some 6.1% of the total incidents reported so far this year. More than 2.7 million records have been reported to be compromised in the incidents.

Since beginning to track data breaches in 2005, ITRC had counted 7,834 breaches through August 22, 2017, involving more than 906 million records.

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About the Author Paul Ausick →

Paul Ausick has been writing for a673b.bigscoots-temp.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.

He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.