The prevalence of various malicious actors that are making it exceedingly difficult for someone or the other to end up feeling truly secure online has resulted in the type of situation wherein everyone has become rather concerned about their online privacy and the like. The Identity Theft Resource Center predicts that 2022 will be the worst year that has ever been seen from a data theft perspective, and that’s despite the positive progress that was seen in certain aspects of this field.
If you were to take a look at the number of individuals that were targeted by data theft, the worst year for that type of data came in 2018. That was the year when 2.2 billion people, well over a third of the global population, suffered from some kind of online security breach and that makes a lot of sense when you consider that that was the year when online security breaches started to become something that people actually started taking relatively seriously for the first time.
The positive progress that we mentioned above was that the number of individuals who have been targeted in security breaches has gone down tremendously. In 2021, around 293 million people suffered from data breaches which represents an 85% decline in just 3 years, but that’s where the good news ends. Even though fewer people are being targeted, the number of successful data breaches where extremely sensitive information has been stolen has increased since 2018.
It now sits at 83% of all the total attacks. This is significantly lower than the 95% that was reported in 2017, but it is still a cause for concern because the percentage has increased from 80% in 2020. What’s more is that identity theft is now no longer the main focus for malicious actors. Rather, they are moving to identity fraud which might have something or the other to do with the fact that malicious actors have already harvested a fair amount of personal information over the last few years. Whatever the case may be, 2022 will prove to be a bit of a litmus test that will determine whether or not people can truly start to feel safe online.
H/T: ITRC.
Read next: Security Breaches are still the biggest nightmare for companies as 40 billion records were exposed in 2021
If you were to take a look at the number of individuals that were targeted by data theft, the worst year for that type of data came in 2018. That was the year when 2.2 billion people, well over a third of the global population, suffered from some kind of online security breach and that makes a lot of sense when you consider that that was the year when online security breaches started to become something that people actually started taking relatively seriously for the first time.
The positive progress that we mentioned above was that the number of individuals who have been targeted in security breaches has gone down tremendously. In 2021, around 293 million people suffered from data breaches which represents an 85% decline in just 3 years, but that’s where the good news ends. Even though fewer people are being targeted, the number of successful data breaches where extremely sensitive information has been stolen has increased since 2018.
It now sits at 83% of all the total attacks. This is significantly lower than the 95% that was reported in 2017, but it is still a cause for concern because the percentage has increased from 80% in 2020. What’s more is that identity theft is now no longer the main focus for malicious actors. Rather, they are moving to identity fraud which might have something or the other to do with the fact that malicious actors have already harvested a fair amount of personal information over the last few years. Whatever the case may be, 2022 will prove to be a bit of a litmus test that will determine whether or not people can truly start to feel safe online.
H/T: ITRC.
Read next: Security Breaches are still the biggest nightmare for companies as 40 billion records were exposed in 2021