The retail industry is the sector hardest hit by data breaches in the second quarter of 2014, a new study released by SafeNet revealed.
Between April and June of this year, the SafeNet Breach Level Index (BLI) showed that there were 237 breaches that compromised more than 175 million customer records of personal and financial information worldwide.
This brings to 559 the total number of breaches for the first half of the year, resulting to more than 375 million customer records stolen or lost. Less than one percent of all 237 breaches during the second quarter were secure breaches where strong encryption or authentication solutions protected the data from being used.
The retail industry had more data records compromised in the second quarter than any other industry, with more than 145 million records stolen or lost, or 83 percent of all data records breached.
SafeNet also announced the results of a global survey of more than 4,500 adult consumers in which nearly 40 percent of respondents said they would never, or were very unlikely to, shop or do business again with a company that had experienced a data breach.
Government was the second least secure sector after retail, accounting for 11 percent of all records that were lost or stolen. Breaches in the financial services, however, decreased significantly from the first quarter, down from 56 percent to less than one percent of records stolen in the second quarter.
"Even amid continued warnings about data security, the breach epidemic is trending in the wrong direction. 2014 has proven to be more of the same, with 375 million customer records stolen in the first six months alone," said Tsion Gonen, chief strategy officer, SafeNet.
"While it’s not surprising that sophisticated cybercriminals are gaining access to critical data stores, what is surprising is that only one percent of breached records had been encrypted. The benefits of encryption have been known for some time, but companies just aren’t doing it. It’s the security industry’s equivalent of flossing your teeth. Everyone knows it’s good for you and the technology is proven, but only a small percentage of companies do it well," he added.
Malicious outsiders are targeting businesses’ most critical records. They are responsible for compromising 99 percent of the records and 56 percent of the incidents this quarter, more than any other source. Meanwhile, identity theft was the leading cause of breaches with 58 percent of all incidents and 88 percent of records stolen.
The BLI provides details about hundreds of individual data breaches, which can be sorted by source, industry, risk level, and date. It also provides a comparative list of breaches, distinguishing nuisances from truly impactful mega breaches. Safenet said information populating the BLI database is based on publicly available breach disclosure information.