The first half of 2020 has seen 52% less data breaches compared to last year, however, the number of exposed records over the same period has soared to over 27 billion.
According to the 2020 Mid Year Data Breach QuickView report from Risk Based Security, the first half of 2020 has the lowest numbers of publicly reported data breaches in five years, but then the number of records with this same period of time is four times higher than previously reported incidents.
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The reports shows that the number of records exposed between January 1, 2020 and June 30, 2020 exceeds the total number of records exposed throughout the whole of 2019 by over 12 billion!
"The striking differences between 2020 and prior years brings up many questions" says Inga Goddijn, executive vice president at Risk Based Security. "Why is the breach count low compared to prior years? What is driving the growth in the number of records? And perhaps mot importantly, is this a permanent change in the data breach landscape?"
Misconfigured databases and services have always been the main issue behind leaked data, with the information, health care, finance and insurance, and public administration sector accounting for over (52.5%) of all reported breaches.
"Misconfigured database and services have been the key driver behind the growing number of records exposed," adds Goddign. "When entire databases are left open and freely accessible, a considerable amount of data is put at risk. It is a small handful of these events in Q2 that are responsible for the explosion in the number of records exposed. In the second quarter of 2020, just two breaches alone were responsible for more than 18 billion of the 27 billion records put at risk."
A full report from Risk Based Security can be found on the site.