According to recent surveys, 25,575 records are accessed in the average data breach. Since the beginning of (and due to) the COVID-19 pandemic, the FBI tells us that there has been a 300% increase in reported cybercrimes. In fact, by 2025, cybercrime will cost the world economy an estimated $10.5 trillion annually.

So, why is this happening? Well, for one, studies show that 38% of all users have passwords that never expire. Perpetual passwords are like ticking timebombs. What’s more, cybercrime protections at businesses can be wholly inadequate. In fact, 28% of data breach victims are small businesses, enterprises that typically lack the funding to institute sophisticated cyber security systems. But, whatever the size of the business, the inability to quickly detect and respond to data breaches can be devastating. According to a 2020 study by IBM, the average time to identify a breach was 228 days. Just imagine what cyber criminals could do with your information during that span of time.

Some other alarming statistics include:

Despite the very high number of publicized data breaches, the actual number of data breaches is likely far greater since many of those breaches have unknown numbers of compromised records.

Social media data breaches accounted for 56% of data breaches in the first half of 2018. (IT Web)

Cloud-based cyber-attacks rose 630% between January and April 2020. (Fintech News)

Confirmed data breaches in the healthcare industry increased by 58% in 2020. (Verizon)

More than 93% of healthcare organizations experienced a data breach in the three year period preceding 2021. (Herjavec Group)

Between 2017 and 2019, there was an 80% increase in the number of people affected by health data breaches, situations where very intimate personal information was accessed by criminals eager to sell it on the dark web.

In 2018 alone, American citizens had 446.5 million of their records exposed. (Statista)

Worldwide, data breaches exposed 4.1 billion records in the first six months of 2019, and then 36 billion records in just the first half of 2020.

So, why is this happening? Well, for one, studies show that 38% of all users have passwords that never expire. Perpetual passwords are like ticking timebombs. What’s more, cybercrime protections at businesses can be wholly inadequate. In fact, 28% of data breach victims are small businesses, enterprises that typically lack the funding to institute sophisticated cyber security systems. But, whatever the size of the business, the inability to quickly detect and respond to data breaches can be devastating. According to a 2020 study by IBM, the average time to identify a breach was 228 days. Just imagine what cyber criminals could do with your information during that span of time.