Technology

2018 Data Breaches Have Exposed 3 Million Records in Less Than a Month

Paul Ausick

Published: January 26, 2018 12:20 pm

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 4:03 am

The latest count from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reports that there have been 69 data breaches recorded this year through January 24 and that 3.1 million records have been exposed since the beginning of the year. The incident total is 9% higher than at the same time last year.

In 2017 the ITRC reported a total of 1,579, a new annual record and 45% higher than the previous record of 1,091 recorded in 2016. The ITRC has been reporting data breach totals since 2005.

The new year got off to a poor start following a breach reported to have exposed some 2 million records from corporate-owned Jason’s Deli restaurants. Customer data was stolen from point-of-sale terminals and may have included a cardholder’s name, credit or debit card number, expiration date, customer verification value and service code. Personal identification numbers (PINs) were not believed to have been stolen.

A breach of nearly 250,000 records at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security also has been reported this year.

The business sector leads them all in the number of records compromised so far in 2018, with more than 2 million exposed records in 33 incidents. That represents 47.8% of the incidents and 64.9% of the exposed records so far this year.

The medical/health care sector has posted 31.9% (22) of all 2018 data breaches. The number of records exposed in these breaches totals nearly 225,000, or about 7.2% of the year-to-date total.

The educational sector has experienced seven data breaches since the beginning of the year. The sector accounts for 10.1% of all breaches for the year and more than 280,000 exposed records, about 9.1% of the year’s total.

The government/military sector has suffered four data breaches to date in 2018, representing about 16% of the total number of records exposed and 5.8% of the incidents. Nearly 500,000 records have been compromised in this sector.

The number of banking/credit/financial sector breaches totals three, about 4.3% of the total incidents reported so far this year. More than 82,000 records have been reported to be compromised in the incidents.

Since beginning to track data breaches in 2005, ITRC had counted 8,548 breaches through January 24, 2018, involving almost 1.06 billion records.