New York Lost $1 Billion Fending Off 900 Data Breaches Last Year

In case you hadn’t heard, data breaches are a problem--a huge problem--and to quantify that somewhat, New York AG Eric Schneiderman released a report detailing his state’s data breach information including the costs involved. There’s a lot of meaty data in the report, but one part that stands out is that there were 900 data breaches in New York in 2013 exposing the personal details of 7.3 million people at a cost of $1.37 billion.

Woof. Those numbers were driven in large part by the massive Target breach as well as those of Sony and Living Social, and they point to the fact that hacking is the leading problem. The report shows that hacks were responsible for 40.78% (2,009) of all New York-related data breaches from 2006-2013, which resulted in 63.3% of all personal records that were exposed.

hacker

Next in line was lost or stolen equipment or documentation (23.69% of breaches) followed by accidental leaks (20.24%) and insider wrongdoing (10.37%).

New York data breach stats

This is a problem that is getting worse. According to the report, the number of data breaches in New York tripled between 2006-2013. Schneiderman’s report advocated some solutions:

“It’s clear that a broad, concerted public education campaign must take place to ensure that all of us – from large corporations, to small businesses and families – are better protected,” he said. “Moving forward, I will advocate for collaboration between industry and security experts to ensure that organizations across the state and country have access to the tools needed to secure our data, so we can best address this complex and growing problem.”

Whatever measures are enacted, they’re desperately needed; data breaches aren’t going to abate any time soon.