Identity theft: the leading type of data breach in 2016

The second most prevalent type of breach in 2016 is account access based breaches. While the incidence of this type of data breach decreased by 3%, it made up 54 % of all breached records, which is an increase of 336%

According to the study, 1,792 data breaches led to almost 1.4 billion data records being compromised worldwide during 2016, an increase of 86% compared to 2015. In addition, 52% of the data breaches in 2016 did not disclose the number of compromised records at the time they were reported.

Across industries, the technology sector had the largest increase in data breaches in 2016. Breaches rose 55%, but only accounted for 11% of all breaches from 2015. Financial services companies accounted for 12% of all data breaches, a 23% decline compared to the previous year.

The Breach Level Index is a global database that tracks data breaches and measures their severity based on multiple dimensions, including the number of records compromised, the type of data, the source of the breach, how the data was used, and whether or not the data was encrypted.