Data breaches increased by 40% in 2016 — and that’s just the ones we know about
US companies and government agencies suffered a record 1,093 data breaches last year, a 40% increase from 2015, according to the Identity Theft Resource Centre (ITRC). Headline-grabbing hacks, with victims ranging from Wendy’s [fast food] to the Democratic National Committee, are increasing despite regulatory scrutiny and more aggressive cyber-security spending. Worldwide spending on security-related hardware, software and services rose to $73.7bn in 2016 from $68.2bn a year earlier, according to researcher International Data Corporation, and that number is expected to approach $90bn in 2018. "We are extremely confident that breaches are undiscovered and under-reported, and we don’t know the full scope," ITRC CEO Eva Casey Velasquez said. "This isn’t the worst-case scenario we are looking at; this is the best-case scenario." Data breaches in 2016 exposed everything from social security numbers to user account log-in names and passwords. Attacks known as phishing, in which an employe...
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