According to a Flashpoint report, 1,980 breaches were reported by organizations in the first half of 2022, a 15% decrease compared to the same period in 2021.
60% of the breaches reported in the first half of 2022 were caused by hacks, 11% of the breaches remain unknown, while others were caused by viruses and fraud.
For breaches with a definite cause, about a quarter occurred within the organization concerned, highlighting some kind of insider threat. 61% of these breaches were attributed to errors in data handling and not to deliberate maliciousness. Other causes include minor thefts of customers’ credit card information to the theft of technological innovations and propriety source code.
The number of breaches detected has dropped dramatically from 27.3 billion in 2021 to 1.4 billion this year, the lowest level since 2015.
Although data breaches in the first half of the year were down, experts still believe they could be at or higher than the overall figure for 2021.
Looking at the total breaches, the number of breaches rose from 6,807 in 2017 to 7,154 in 2018 and then to 7,632 in 2019 but dropped sharply to 4,472 in 2020 and then to 4,630 in 2021.
According to Inga Goddijn, VP of structured intelligence at Flashpoint, the decline is the result of fewer open misconfigured services and database breaches being reported, in which one event can account for billions of records being lost.
To protect against data breaches, organizations are advised to use secure databases as well as strong vulnerability and patch management programs.
The sources for this piece include an article in TechRepublic.
