SAN DIEGO—The number of reported data breaches rose 17% to 1,473 in 2019 from 1,257 a year earlier, according to a new report.
The data from nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center suggests that a trend-defying drop in data breaches recorded in 2018 was a mere "blip," MarketWatch said.
But the ITRC analysis also found there was a roughly 50% drop in the number of overall records exposed in 2019, and a 65% reduction—from more than 471 million in 2018 to under 165 million in 2019—in the exposure of "sensitive personally identifiable information."
“We also saw the rise of a significant new threat—data exposure from unsecured databases—and growth of an existing tactic known as credential stuffing where data thieves use seemingly innocuous information like stolen email addresses and logins to attempt to access various kinds of accounts,” noted MarketWatch in its analysis.