From the press release:
The slowdown in the global economy has certainly not translated into a corresponding slowdown in criminal efforts to compromise personal information, according to Risk Based Security, Inc. The total number of records exposed during the first 9 months of 2011 is 176,385,870 compared to 88,473,589 records for all of 2010. An even more alarming statistic is that as of October 2011, there have now been over 1 billion records exposed according to research by the Open Security Foundation.
Risk Based Security’s 3rd Quarter “Data Breach Intelligence” report just released for customers shows that nearly 50 percent of the reported data breaches in 2011 involved retail businesses, and those breaches accounted for nearly 25 percent of the total records exposed so far in 2011. Organizations providing medical related services accounted for nearly 31 percent of the data breaches reported in the first nine months of 2011. This same sector represented 29 percent of the reported 2010 breaches.
The Data Breach Intelligence report also revealed that a hack or computer-based intrusion was responsible for 25 percent of the 2011 breaches, totaling 147,496,666 records. This represents nearly 84 percent of the total number of exposed records in 2011. Although stolen laptops remains the number one breach type all-time, the hack breach type has replaced stolen laptop at number one for the past two years.
Read the rest of the release on MarketWatch.
FD: I’m a curator for the Open Security Foundation DatalossDB project and I think I’m involved in Risk Based Security, too. I say “think” because I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing with them yet. đÂ