According to a report from Risk Based Security, the number of records compromised for the year stands just short of 370 million, the lowest exposed record count since 2012. What’s more, there has been virtually no change in the percentage of incidents exposing between 1 and 1,000 records. This remains steady, between 55% and 60% of all reported incidents, indicating overall severity is unchanged.
The researchers at RBS have been tracking two interesting trends in 2015. While hacking consistently takes the top spot as the leading cause of data breaches and fraud usually occupies second place, skimming has made an unexpected appearance in the number 2 position this quarter.
Several state-wide efforts to find and remove skimming devices at gas stations and ATMs is a driving factor behind this increase. However, one cannot help but wonder if the desire to cash in on old magnetic strip technology before the shift to chip embedded payment cards played a role in this unusual blip in skimming activity.
Another notable trend is the number of repeat events taking place at the same organization. In total, over 1,400 organizations in the RBS database have reported more than one data breach. In 2015 alone, 99 organizations reported multiple breaches.
While governmental agencies appear to be especially prone to multiple events, no industry segment is immune to repeated security failures.
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