New research has shown that a surge in computer hacking has led to an incredible breach of security – more than six billion records were hacked so far this year. Bear in mind that we’re still nowhere near the end of 2017, and this number has already topped the total for 2016.
Risk Based Security in Virginia said that it identified 2,227 publicly disclosed data compromise events affecting government, medical, educational and business data. This came as a part of a mid-year report.
Inga Goddijn, Executive Vice President for Risk Based Security, said that is is “stunning” to observe this steady increase in the number of data breaches that affect one million or million or more records.
Interestingly, the report said that employment and tax records are among the most hacked records. As for the techniques the hackers use, many have successfully used phishing or spoofing emails to obtain tax information from US citizens. Of course, tax and employment records are only some of the targets; others include human resources departments, employment agencies, and as mentioned, medical, educational, government and business data.
“While news of politically motivated foreign interference in election systems continues to dominate the headlines, the breach activity we are tracking this year is a stark reminder of just how many data compromise incidents are motivated by financial gain,” warned Goddijn.
Source:
Phys.org (https://phys.org/news/2017-07-billion-hacked-year.html)
Chanwoo's Weekly Tech 