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Earlier this week, a report commissioned by Apple highlighted, yet again, why end-to-end encryption must be used when protecting sensitive data against theft and misuse, and why analysts have long recommended it.
In the report, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has conducted an independent review of publicly reported breaches which has been conducted for the tech giant in response to the report. The study found that ransomware campaigns and attacks on trusted technology vendors over the past two years have been responsible for a dramatic increase in data breaches and the number of records that have been compromised due to these breaches.
The number of records exposed for the first time in 2021 and 2022 had reached a staggering 2.6 billion, with 1.5 billion of those records being exposed last year alone. Considering the trends so far this year, it is highly likely that this number will be even higher in 2023.
There have already been 20% more data breaches in the first nine months of 2023 alone, compared to all of 2022 combined, and the 2017 number is only 20% lower than the 17% increase in 2022. By the end of August 2023, it is estimated that 360 million sensitive records belong to around 360 companies and institutions that were exposed as a result of corporate and institutional breaches.