[BreachExchange] 2.6 billion records exposed in 2, 300 disclosed breaches so far this year

[Destry Winant]

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/08/16/records-exposed-2018/

Risk Based Security released its Mid-Year 2018 Data Breach QuickView
report, showing there have been 2,308 publicly disclosed data
compromise eventsthrough June 30th. After a surprising drop in the
number of reported data breaches in first quarter, breach activity
appears to be returning to a more “normal” pace. At the mid-year
point, 2018 closely mirrors 2016’s breach experience but still trails
the high water mark set in 2017.

“2018 has been a curious year. After the wild ride of 2017, we became
accustomed to seeing a lot of breaches, exposing extraordinary amounts
of information. 2018 is remarkable in that the number of public
disclosed breaches appears to be leveling off while the number of
records exposed remains stubbornly high,” said Inga Goddijn, Executive
Vice President for Risk Based Security. “It’s not easy to characterize
2.6 billion records exposed as an improvement, even if it is less than
the 6 billion exposed at this time last year.”

Phishing for usernames and passwords then using the stolen credentials
to access systems or services stands out as a particularly popular
attack method utilized by hackers in the first 6 months of the year.

Additionally, the arrival of the GDPR in May brought another layer of
nuance to the cataloguing and reporting of data breaches. After the
GDPR took effect, data protection authorities across the EU reported
sizable spikes in the number of breaches submitted to their offices.
How many will become public – or have already been disclosed and are
only now making their way to regulators attention – remains to be
seen.

Similar to Q1, fraud continues to hold the top spot for the breach
type compromising the most records, accounting for 47.5% of exposed
records. As with prior reports, the number of incidents attributed to
hacking remains high, accounting for well over 50% of disclosed
breaches.

With the number of vulnerabilities reported this year on pace to
exceed 2017 and over 3,000 of those vulnerabilities going uncovered by
the CVE and National Vulnerability Database (NVD), it is tempting to
attribute the high percentage of breaches from hacking to inferior or
incomplete vulnerability intelligence.

Ms Goddijn remarked, “There are a lot of moving parts to an effective
information security program and certainly patch management is one of
the trickier components to tackle. That said, tried and true social
engineeringtechniques combined with the ability to take advantage of
unpatched weaknesses are some of the most effective tools malicious
actors can use. That means defending against activities like phishing
and solid vulnerability management go hand in hand when it comes to
stopping hackers.”

“While we expect hacking to remain the leading cause of data loss, we
can’t lose sight of the damage that can come from accidental exposure.
Misconfigured services, exposed S3 buckets and even improper email
handling have led to more than their fair share of recent breaches.
This type of data loss is easily prevented and protecting against it
is nearly entirely within the organization’s control. It shouldn’t be
overlooked in the quest to prevent external attacks,” Ms Goddijn
concluded.