DGI Center of Information About Security Breachessee also The Cost of Data Breaches
The terms "security breach" and "data breach" have come to signify the failure of controls to maintain the security or privacy of electronic data.
Breaches occur for many reasons: hacking, stolen data contained in tapes and computer equipment, lost data contained in tapes and computer equipment, or careless or unthinking disclosure of information.
New cases occur nearly every day: the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse keeps a running tally.
Here are some statistics as of 7-3-2007
- Total number of events since they started keeping track on Jan 10, 2005 - 636
- 2005 count - 116 events
- 2006 count - 337 events
- 2007 count -181 events as of July 3: notice the upward trend!
- Total number of records affected 158,048,276
Note: The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (the source of the totals listed above) points out that the total numbers of records represents the approximate number of *records* that have been compromised due to security breaches, not necessarily the number of *individuals* affected. The clearinghouse reminds us that some individuals may be the victims of more than one breach, which would affect the totals.
What's the cost of a security breach? Here's an online "calculator" that can be used to arrive at an estimated cost of a breach based on the number of records exposed. (Note: The Data Governance Institute does not endorse the product or the numbers that come out of it.)
Want more information?
- Check out the Attrition-Dataloss free e-mail list-serve on the latest breaches.
- The Attrition Web page also provides links to news articles about data breaches.
- Attrition provides an open source database of its data breach records, called the Data Loss Database - Open Source, or DLDOS. You can import this file (it's a CSV - flat, comma-separated value file) into a database or spreadsheet program for your own data analysis.
- A PDF of law review article on data breach notice laws.
statistical breakdown
- 2005-08-01 - Lost, Stolen or Strayed
- 2005-10-03 - Data Scandal - Computerworld
- 2005-10-9 - Lessons learned from corporate security breaches
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