According to a new report by Risk Based Security, 3.2% fewer data breaches took place in 2018 compared to the year before and the number of exposed records decreased 35.9%, from 7.9 billion in 2017 to 5 billion last year. However, the company said that not all data breaches from 2018 have been disclosed yet, so the final numbers for 2018 may actually end up being higher than those for 2017.
On average, companies that suffered a data breach disclosed the incident within 50 days, which is one day longer than in 2017. 2018 counted 12 mega breaches in which more than 100 million records were exposed. In 2017 the number was 13. Most breaches were of a much smaller magnitude however, involving the exposure of under 10,000 records. The most common cause of a breach was a cyber attack by an external threat actor.
Read more: The year 2018 was the second most active year on record for data breaches, report says
