Almost 1.4 billion data records compromised in 2016 as hackers targeted large-scale databases across multiple industries.
Gemalto has released the findings of its 2016 Breach Level Index revealing that 1,792 publicly disclosed data breaches led to almost 1.4 billion data records being compromised worldwide during 2016, an increase of 86 percent compared to 2015.
Identity theft was the leading type of data breach in 2016, accounting for 59 percent of all data breaches. In addition, 52 percent of the data breaches in 2016 did not disclose the number of compromised records at the time they were reported.
The Breach Level Index is a global database that tracks data breaches and measures their severity based on multiple dimensions, including the number of records compromised, the type of data, the source of the breach, how the data was used and whether the data was encrypted.
Gemalto assigned a severity score to each breach in the Index, ranging from one to 10, with one meaning the breach had a small impact on the victims and 10 indicating a breach with significant ramifications.