1.4 Billion Data Records Exposed in 2016 Breaches

Cybercriminals infiltrated some 1.4 billion data records last year – a whopping 86% increase over the previous year, according to a new report released today by digital security firm Gemalto.

This bounty of information was snagged in 1,792 incidents worldwide, which yielded a larger haul with fewer attempts, according to the report. The number of data record breaches fell 4% in 2016, compared with year earlier figures.

Identity theft accounted for 59% of the data breach incidents, a 5% increase from 2015. Account access-based breaches was next in line as the most prevalent type of data breach, even though this form of attack fell by 3% over the previous year. Account access-based attacks accounted for 54% of the 1.4 billion breached records, and the number of affected records rose by 336% over 2015.

"This highlights the cybercriminal trend from financial information attacks to bigger databases with large volumes of personally identifiable information," the report states.

Outside malicious attackers accounted for 68% of the breaches, an increase of 13% from 2015. The most targeted industries included technology, which incurred 11% of the breaches and suffered the largest increase in attacks, with a 55% jump over last year. Healthcare was hit with 28% of all data breaches, with an 11% year-over-year increase in attacks, and financial services, 12% of data breaches, a level that constitutes a 23% decline in attacks compared with last year.

Read more in the Breach Level Index Report.