The study was made on the numbers around publicly reported breaches found in 2016; there were 1,093 incidents in 2016, up from 780 in 2015—a new record in reported numbers.
The report reveals that more than half of the data breaches (52% ) exposed Social Security numbers, an increase of 8.2% over 2015 figures; but only 13% of data breaches exposed credit card or debit card information, a decrease of 7.4% from 2015.
Hacking, skimming, and phishing attacks were the leading cause of data breach incidents for the eighth year in a row, accounting for 55.5% of the overall number of breaches. That is an increase of 17.7% over 2015 figures.
On top of the list of data breach incidents we have the business sector with 494 incidents reported, representing 45.2% of the overall number of breaches. The medical industry overall reported 377 incidents, accounting for 34.5% of them. The education sector had 98, representing 9%, the government, military (72) came in at 6.6% and the banking, credit, financial sector (52) at 4.8%.
Breaches involving accidental email or internet exposure of information was the second most common type of breach incident at 9.2% of the overall number of breaches, followed by employee error at 8.7%. With the exception of hacking, all other categories reflected decreases from 2015 figures.
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