Here are some interesting facts we have discovered after analyzing the 2014 security breach statistics. The number of U.S. data breaches tracked in 2014 hit a record high of 783 in 2014. This represents a substantial hike of 27.5 percent over the number of breaches reported in 2013 and a significant increase of 18.3 percent over the previous high of 662 breaches tracked in 2010. The number of U.S. data breach incidents tracked since 2005 also hit a milestone of 5,029 reported data breach incidents, involving more than 675 million estimated records.
Continuing a three-year trend, breaches in the Medical/Healthcare industry topped the list with 42.5 percent of the breaches identified in 2014. With the Anthem breach just reported this month, 2015 is trending again towards the healthcare sector. The Business sector continued in its second place ranking with 33.0 percent of the data breach incidents, followed by the Government/Military sector at 11.7 percent. These categories were followed by the Education sector at 7.3 percent and Banking/Credit/Financial at 5.5 percent.
We also have a good sense that only about 30% of all breaches are reported to law enforcement so we could surmise that for the US alone, approximately 1,331 breaches occurred in 2014. Hopefully this infographic will help illustrate the facts.
The best and only thing that a company can do to remain ahead of threats by being proactive in the appropriate implementation of Governance, Technology and Vigilance (AKA The Security Trifecta). When about 96% of all breaches are avoidable through the application of simple and intermediate level controls, it is absolutely within your power to protect your company. Let me show you the way.