2017 Data Breaches to Date Nears 2016 Total

By Paul Ausick Updated Jan 12, 7:30AM EST · Published Oct 5, 8:10AM EDT

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2017 Data Breaches to Date Nears 2016 Total — © Thinkstock

The latest count from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reports that there have been 1,056 data breaches recorded this year through October 3 and that more than 171 million records have been exposed since the beginning of the year. The incident total is 23.2% 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 record could rise to around 1,500 in 2017.

Equifax added 2.5 million to the total number of records exposed in the company’s massive data breach. The total now stands at 145.5 million.

Last week, some 5 million credit and debit card accounts were breached at Sonic drive-in restaurants. The company has about 3,600 stores in 45 states. The stolen data were offered for sale at a dark web site on September 18, according to a report at KrebsOnSecurity.

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The business sector leads them all in the number of records compromised so far in 2017 with nearly 157 million exposed records in 551 incidents. That represents 52.2% of the incidents and 91.7% of the exposed records so far this year.

The medical/health care sector has posted 27% (285) of all 2017 data breaches. The number of records exposed in these breaches totals nearly 4.6 million, or about 2.7% of the 2017 total.

The educational sector has experienced 102 data breaches since the beginning of the year. The sector accounts for 9.7% of all breaches for the year and more than 1.1 million exposed records, about 0.7% of the year’s total.

The government/military sector has suffered 52 data breaches to date, representing about 3.4% of the total number of records exposed and 4.9% of the incidents. Nearly 5.8 million records have been compromised in this sector.

The number of banking/credit/financial sector breaches now totals 66, some 6.3% of the total incidents reported so far this year. More than 2.7 million records have been reported to be compromised in the incidents.

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Since beginning to track data breaches in 2005, ITRC had counted 7,954 breaches through September 21, 2017, involving more than 1.05 billion 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.