It's hard to remember all the data breaches that happened in 2018. But when you look at the biggest and most impactful ones reported throughout the year, you'll see a grim picture of the current state of data security.
The consequences of a data breach by large companies are many. For consumers, it represents loss of privacy, potential identity theft, and countless hours of repairing damage to their devices and replacing data (credit cards, passwords, IDs, etc.). And it’s also costly for companies, in the form of negative publicity and the resulting damage to their reputation, as well as the time and money spent remediating the breach and ensuring customer data is well-secured in the future.
However, despite the well-known cost of data breaches, the problem of data breaches is not improving. While there were a higher number of breaches in 2017, 2018 was notable for the massive scale and name-brand players, including Facebook, Under Armour, Marriott, Quora, HSBC, NASA , and Panera Bread. Cybercriminals stole sensitive personally identifiable information from users, including email and physical addresses, passwords, credit card numbers, phone numbers, travel itineraries, passport data, and more.
You would think that these problems would make companies more diligent about preventing data breaches, but that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, companies rarely discover data breaches themselves. According to DarkReading, only 13% of data breaches are discovered internally, by victims.
To help people online better understand the modern problem of data breaches, TruthFinder created this infographic. It breaks down the extent of data breaches, using statistics from 2005 to the present. Take a look at the infographic below to get a sense of why 2018 was a year of data breach tsunamis.
