New statistics released by Gemalto, for the first half of 2017, show that cybercrime increased exponentially, in the first half of 2017 compared to the previous 6 months. 918 data breaches occurred that led to 1.9 billion records being compromised worldwide in the first half of 2017, with 88% of those occurring in North America. This means that more records were lost or stolen in the first half of 2017, than in the entire year of 2016. Even scarier is the fact that 74% of those data breaches were caused by malicious outsiders, which is a rise of 23% from 2016. This means that more and more successful attacks are being perpetrated with malicious intent by cyber criminals, as opposed to accidental data loss, than ever before. The top 3 industries under attack in the first half of 2017 were financial services, healthcare and education, with the latter more than doubling in the amount of breaches incurred. Accounting firms are also being hit hard by cybercrime, with an increase of 25% in exposed W-2 information, and an almost 10% increase in incidents affecting social security numbers, since 2016.
Another alarming statistic shows that malicious insider attacks (attacks done by employees of a company) led to 20 million records being compromised in the first half of 2017. Compare this to 500,000 records in the previous 6 months and that is a 4,114% increase. It is important that your security assessments and protocols take into consideration not just breaches from the outside, but also, from inside your own network.
Cybercrime is more dangerous than ever, with data breaches on the rise by more than 164% in the first half of 2017 compared to the previous 6 months. Cybersecurity has never been more important than now, to businesses and the data they possess. Do not delay, engage with a dedicated IT security company, who can not only strengthen your company’s security posture, but can safeguard the critical data your company as on its systems.
Contact us now, to see if your company qualifies for our no-cost security study, that can help you better understand what risks your company may be exposed to so you can better protect it.