According to Gemalto’s breach level index, over 3.6 billion data records have been exposed since 2013, marking the start of its benchmarking on publicly disclosed data breaches. In 2015, malicious outsiders emerged as the leading cause, contributing to 964 breaches and accounting for 58% of all breaches, and 38% of the compromised records. Identity theft remained a significant issue, representing 53% of data breaches and 40% of all exposed records.

Across various industries, the government sector took a prominent role in data breach statistics, with 43% of compromised data records originating from this sector due to several large-scale incidents in the United States and Turkey. This is a marked increase of 476% compared to the previous year. The healthcare industry followed closely behind at 19% of total exposed records and 23% of all breaches.

In contrast, significant reductions were observed in other sectors like retail and financial services. Retail experienced a major decline (93%) in data theft cases, dropping to just 6% of stolen records and 10% of the overall breach incidents. Similarly, financial services saw a near-complete drop, with only 0.1% of compromised data records and 15% of total breaches.

Malicious outsiders continued to be the most common source of breaches (58%), but accidental loss or exposure of data accounted for 36% of all records affected. State-sponsored attacks were less frequent, constituting only 2% of breaches but causing a substantial 15% of exposed records. Malicious insiders were responsible for 14% of the breaches and 7% of compromised records.

From a geographical perspective, North America was the region with the highest incidence of data breaches at 77%, followed by the United States (59%) which housed most of the compromised records. Europe contributed to 12% of overall breach incidents, while the Asia Pacific region represented only 8%.