Data Breaches Down 14% From Last Year's Record Number

The latest word from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) is that the reported data breach number is about 14% lower so far this year than last year's record number of breaches.  As of February 16, that there have been 124 data breaches reported, with nearly 3 million records exposed since the beginning of the year. 

This is certainly good and welcome news, but "the barn door has already been left open." Our personal information has been exposed multiple times over in recent years, most notably in the Equifax breach last year. Still, I'll take the good news; better than 14% higher.

Looking at the ITRC numbers just reported, the business sector continues to lead the breach count with 40% of the breaches (and 74% of the records exposed), but medical breaches have risen to nearly 1/3 of the breaches.  I'm very worried about the medical numbers, because so much critical data, including medical insurance data and medical conditions are stolen. This information is not typically monitored by free credit card or bank ID theft monitoring services. If used in a medical fraud, it is extremely difficult to correct it.

Here's how the numbers break out, January 1 through February 16, 2018:

  • Business = 40.3 percent
  • Medical/Healthcare = 29.8 percent
  • Banking/Credit/Financial = 11.3 percent
  • Government/Military = 10.5 percent
  • Educational = 8.1 percent

You can read the details of the ITRC report at:

#idtheft #identitytheft

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