Security News
The 10 Biggest Data Breaches Of 2022
Jay Fitzgerald
According to the newest breach statistics from the Identity Theft Research Center, the number of victims jumped dramatically in the third quarter—a ‘staggering 210 percent over Q2 2022.’
The data breach picture for 2022 isn’t pretty.
At the start of the year, the number of victims per data breach incident was actually falling across the country, suggesting that companies with lots of customers might be doing a better job of protecting their data than in years past.
But that was then and this is now.
According to the most recent breach statistics provided by the Identity Theft Research Center, the number of victims jumped dramatically in the third quarter—a “staggering 210 percent over Q2 2022.”
Meanwhile, the actual number of data compromise incidents also increased by 15 percent in the third quarter to 474 incidents compared with the second quarter of 2022, according to the center.
But there is good news: The number of data compromise incidents is still down from 2021, the center said. And the number of overall data breach victims in 2022 is nevertheless expected to be below 2021 numbers.
Some other key takeaways from the Identity Theft Research Center’s thrid-quarter report:
• Supply chain attacks “made a comeback” in the third quarter, with the number of impacted entities increasing by 250 percent compared with earlier quarters.
• Phishing attacks remained the top attack vector for the 15th consecutive quarter.
• And, discouragingly, more than 45 percent of data breach notices related to cyberattacks “did not contain information about the attack that could assist other businesses or individuals take actions to prevent or recover from a similar attack,” the center reported.
The Identity Theft Research Center does not report fourth-quarter and final-year breach statistics until late January.
But it did say in its third-quarter report that “absent a dramatic increase in data compromises in Q4 2022, it is unlikely the total number of data breaches will set a record this year.”
The report added: “Despite a triple-digit increase in victims during Q3, the number of data compromise victims is likely to show a year-over-year decline for the fourth year in a row.”
Following are the 10 largest data breached recorded by the Identity Theft Research Center through the third quarter.
