There are a growing number of cybersecurity incidents around the world, such as major data breaches, and the discussion of customer data and privacy has never been more timely. Here are the numbers to prove it:
- A study by the University of Maryland found a nearly constant rate of hacker attacks on Internet-connected computers – an average of one every 39 seconds.
- The cost of a data breach increased from $3.86 million to $4.24 million in 2021, the highest average on record.
- The average cost was $1.07 million higher for breaches where remote work was a factor in the breach compared to breaches where remote work was not a factor.
- The most common initial attack vector, compromised credentials, caused the majority of breaches (20%) with an average cost of $4.37 million.
- 77% of IT professionals say they do not have an enterprise-wide cybersecurity incident response plan.
- The average company has 534,465 files containing sensitive data.
- 24% of Americans say their personal data is “very vulnerable” to compromise. Only 2% of Americans do not believe their data is vulnerable to compromise.
- Concerns that banking and financial data could be hacked or shared have always been at the top of users’ list of data concerns, with 78% of users being most protective of their financial data.
- The global information security market is expected to reach $170.4 billion by 2022.
- 27% of users who have suffered from an online security incident believe that the incident cost them between $100 and $10,000 or more.
- 90% of internet users are concerned that their passwords could be hacked. 46% are “very concerned” about this, and 44% are “somewhat concerned”.
- Younger internet users don’t use numeric passwords like “123456”. In fact, 76% of Gen-Z users use a two-step authentication method.
- Nearly 33% of email and social media users were victims of at least one cyberattack in 201. More than half of them had their personal data stolen.
- 64% of Americans would blame the company, not the hacker, for the loss of personal data.
- In the first half of 2020 alone, 36 billion records were exposed due to data breaches.
- Older people tend to be more vulnerable to identity theft. The FTC reported that in 2017, 35% of fraud complaints and 18.9% of identity theft complaints were filed by seniors.
- 44% of Internet users have experienced some form of online harassment. The majority of these victims are women: one in six reports such an experience, compared to only one in 19 men.