The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) just released its Q3 data breach report, and the results are staggering.
The previous record for total data breaches per year was smashed, with there already being 14% more data breaches during the first nine months of 2023 than in the entirety of 2021. We still have three more months for that number to spike, and it’s already greatly surpassed our previous record year for data breaches.
There were 733 data breaches carried out in Q3 alone, with financial service data breaches alone facing more than 200 breaches. This exceeds attacks on Healthcare for the first time since Q2 2022.
“The number of financial institutions reporting data compromises jumped dramatically in Q3, with 204 notices issued, exceeding the total number of Financial Service compromises reported in the past two years (135),” explains the ITRC in its most recent data breach analysis report.
The total number of data breaches already exceeds 2100. Professional services (81 compromises), manufacturing (65 compromises), and education (42 compromises) make up the other three most attacked fields.
The largest data breach of the year so far was HCA Healthcare INC. Its breach affected more than 11 million individuals.
The rise in data breaches has led to a sharp increase in zero-day attacks, meaning attacks that prey on previously undisclosed vulnerabilities for which there are no security patches. Ransomware attacks are also on the rise after cybercriminal groups were shelved after the first year of the war in Ukraine.
Phishing attacks are still the most common method of obtaining employee information.
“However, with more entities not reporting an attack vector than those that did, it is difficult to be precise about the rate of specific attack vectors,” it said in the report.
There were 386 attacks recorded without specific attack vendors, while only 347 were recorded with a vector.