Abstract
ITRC collects information about data breaches made public via reliable media and notification lists from various governmental agencies. There are breaches that occurred in 2009 that never made public news. So rather than focus on a question without an answer, ITRC used percentages to analyze the 498 breaches recorded this year looking for any changes or new trends. (Both raw numbers and percentages have been provided in all charts).
The main highlights are:
- paper breaches account for nearly 26% of known breaches (an increase of 46% over 2008)
- business sector climbed from 21% to 41% between 2006 to 2009, the worst sector performance by far
- malicious attacks have surpassed human error for the first time in three years
- Out of 498 breaches, only six reported that they had either encryption or other strong security features protecting the exposed data