Q3, 2023 Sees 76% Fall in Data Breaches
The United States remains the country most targeted by cybercriminals and nation-state actors, with 8.1 million breached accounts in Q3, 2023 – 26% of the global total of 31.5 million accounts that were breached from July through September 2023, according to Surfshark’s Data Breach Statistics: Q3 2023 Report. Russia was the second most targeted country with 7.1M breached accounts, followed by France (1.6M), China (1.5M), and Mexico (1.2M).
In the United States, that amounts to one breached account per second in Q3, although that is 84% fewer breached accounts than in Q2, 2023. Globally, there was a 76% decrease in breached users worldwide compared to Q2, 2023. North America was the second most targeted region, with Europe taking the top spot with 10.9 million breached accounts, down from 48.1 million breached accounts in Q2, 2023. North America had 30% of the breaches in Q3, 2023, with 9.5 million accounts breached, down from 82% of breached accounts in Q2, 2023. The countries with the highest breach density, which is the number of breached accounts per 1,000 residents, were Russia, France, the US, Colombia, and Malaysia. Last year, data breaches increased by 70% from Q2 to Q3, rising to 108.9 million breached accounts globally in Q3 – a rate of around 14 breaches per second. The United States was the fourth most attacked country behind Russia, France, and Indonesia.
The reduction in data breaches is certainly good news but data breaches are still being reported at alarming rates. “The third quarter of 2023 shows a general decrease in data breach count. Yet every minute, over 240 online accounts were compromised globally, exposing sensitive information to malicious actors,” says Agneska Sablovskaja, Lead Researcher at Surfshark. “We recommend a vigilant approach by maintaining accounts only on actively used platforms and implementing two-factor authentication for enhanced security.”
Surfshark’s data breach statistics were compiled from data collected by independent partners from 29,000 publicly available databases, which were aggregated by email address. The locations of the breaches were determined by domains, IP addresses, locales, coordinates, currency, or phone numbers.
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Massive Increase in Breached Healthcare Records, Despite Reduction in Data Breaches
The Surfshark report does not break down data breaches by industry, so how has the healthcare industry fared? The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule requires HIPAA-regulated entities to report data breaches to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights publishes a list of breaches of 500 or more records.
OCR’s breach report data show an 8.5% reduction in healthcare data breaches from Q2, 2023 to Q3, 2023, and a 5.2% reduction in breaches from Q3, 2022. The year to September 30, 2023, has seen 10 fewer breaches (-1.83%) than the corresponding period in 2022.
Data Source: HHS’ Office for Civil Rights Breach Portal
While there has been a reduction in reported data breaches, there has been an alarming increase in the number of breached records. In Q3, 2023, an astonishing 45,799,584 healthcare records were breached – 53.47% more records than the previous quarter. The Q3 total is only 74,000 records short of the total number of healthcare records breached in all of 2021.
Data Source: HHS’ Office for Civil Rights Breach Portal
