Mary-Louise Hoffman
SafeNet‘s Breach Level Index report indicates that hackers stole more than 200 million records in the first quarter of 2014, a 233 percent increase as compared to the same period last year.
Only one percent of the 254 security incidents reported during Q1 were “secure breaches,” where encryption or authentication systems prevented hackers from using sensitive data, SafeNet said Tuesday.
Four of the top five data breaches worldwide occurred in South Korea and that country saw 158 million records lost across various sectors, according to SafeNet.
Seventy-eight percent of global breaches occurred in North America, while 13 percent took place in Europe, SafeNet says.
The healthcare sector accounted for 24 percent of global Q1 breach events, while the government and education sectors accounted for 23 percent of security breaches, the report states.
Sixty-two percent of unauthorized data access activities were executed by malicious outsiders and 11 percent were carried out by malicious insiders, SafetNet says.
