Breaches fall but victims rise

Category: Data recovery

14 September, 2012

The number of data breaches in 2012 is lower than in the same period last year.

However, the drop is thought to be down to a greater focus by hackers on identifying the most lucrative targets.

Symantec's Norton Cybercrime Index (CCI) found that the average number of data breaches per month fell in 2012 to 14 from 16.5 in 2011.

The report also found that the number of identities stolen was down to an average of 640,169 identities per breach, from the 2011 average of 1,311,629 per data breach.

Nevertheless, Symantec said that a number of large breaches in 2011 warped the figures and that the overall trend is that the core number of identities stolen is increasing.

"This could indicate that the attackers are going after more select, targeted batches of data, as opposed to making off with big-number caches of data. The information that they are stealing could very well be smaller in size, but more useful for criminal activities," explained said Paul Wood, cyber security intelligence manager at Symantec.

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Posted by Lucy Hill