According to research conducted by the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), publicly reported US data breaches have declined by 33% in the first half of 2020. Compared to the first half of 2019, 2020 has shown a significant decrease in US identity compromises. ITRC’s analysis also shows that breaches impacting individuals have dropped by 66% when compared to the first half of 2019.
ITRC reported that there were 811 publicly reported data breached impacting roughly 493 million individuals this time last year, whereas this year there have been 540 breaches impacting 164 million. In 2019, attacks by external threat actors were the most common cause of data breach, and this remains true for the first half of 2020. However, compromises caused by internal threat actors are at a three-year low according to the IRTC, who stated that this might be due to the pandemic causes more employees to work from home and have decreased access to internal systems.
Read More: Data breaches decline 33% in the first half of 2020