Record
With over a month still to go, 2019 is already on course to break the record for the most data breaches and exposed account details in a single year. Risk Based Security says there were 5,183 data breaches and 7.9 billion records exposed in the first 9 months of the year. That's an increase of 33.3% over the same period last year. While 'malicious actors' continue to be a key problem, the company says over 6 billion records were exposed because they weren't secured properly (or at all). "What stands out is that we are often our own worst enemy. Whether it’s a phishing campaign that ultimately provides malicious actors with a toehold into systems or misconfigured databases and services that leave millions of sensitive records freely available on the internet, it seems to be human nature coupled with weak controls that contributed heavily to the number and severity of breaches we’ve seen this year," Risk Based Security says.