Data compromises, in the guise of mass phishing attacks or targeted cybersecurity threats aimed at companies, managed to affect a total of twenty million US citizens in Q1 2022.
The data from a Q1 2022 report published by the Identity Theft Resource Center, a non-profit aimed towards providing users with counselling regarding added online security, and recuperation from successful attacks against them. Honestly, the data has some rather good news, since Q1 2022 has by far been the safest year for Americans online. Of course, when the yardstick for “safest” is considered to be over twenty million individual users, perhaps the game’s status quo has changed a bit too much. The largest chance of encountering cybersecurity threats for the average US citizen was seen in Q3 2021, at over 163 million affected users. That’s just over an eight-fold difference, which means that users are probably getting more and more aware of cybersecurity threats. Companies that host massive swaths of personal user data are also probably upgrading their protection software and whatnot.
It should be noted, however, that despite more people being affected in Q3 2021 as opposed to Q1 2022, the number of attacks having been carried out remained rather similar. Q3 ’21 saw a total of 445 attacks, while Q1 ’22 oversaw 404. This helps give credence to my theory about companies choosing to upgrade their software, or to handle data better.
Read next: You Are Not Alone, Even CEOs Use The Password 123456
The data from a Q1 2022 report published by the Identity Theft Resource Center, a non-profit aimed towards providing users with counselling regarding added online security, and recuperation from successful attacks against them. Honestly, the data has some rather good news, since Q1 2022 has by far been the safest year for Americans online. Of course, when the yardstick for “safest” is considered to be over twenty million individual users, perhaps the game’s status quo has changed a bit too much. The largest chance of encountering cybersecurity threats for the average US citizen was seen in Q3 2021, at over 163 million affected users. That’s just over an eight-fold difference, which means that users are probably getting more and more aware of cybersecurity threats. Companies that host massive swaths of personal user data are also probably upgrading their protection software and whatnot.
It should be noted, however, that despite more people being affected in Q3 2021 as opposed to Q1 2022, the number of attacks having been carried out remained rather similar. Q3 ’21 saw a total of 445 attacks, while Q1 ’22 oversaw 404. This helps give credence to my theory about companies choosing to upgrade their software, or to handle data better.
Read next: You Are Not Alone, Even CEOs Use The Password 123456