In the first three quarters of 2020, the number of data breaches fell to its lowest level in five years, while the number of records put at risk by those breaches skyrocketed to more than four times the level of the same nine months in 2019, according to Risk Based Security's (RBS) latest quarterly breach report.
The massive rise in the number of records exposed during breaches in 2020 is partly due to a handful of large misconfigured databases, RBS states in the Q3 report. Two breaches exposed more than 1 billion records each, and another four breaches put at risk more than 100 million records each.
While the number of breaches is typically a measure of malicious activity, the number of records exposed to risk is generally due to an increase in the discovery of misconfigured databases and services, says Inga Goddijn, executive vice president at RBS.
"When we look at the records exposed, it is important to keep in mind that the real driver behind that is the misconfigured databases and services, where folks find the open data sets, they explore and look around, and then the incident gets reported," she says. "They are more focused on the entire dataset put at risk."
There may not necessarily be fewer breaches, says Goddijn. The different numbers underscore the differences in what can be considered a data breach. RBS defines a data breach as the "unauthorized access to, or loss of control of, confidential or sensitive information," the report states.
In addition, companies hit with ransomware do not always report the incident as a breach, especially if they do no ..
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