By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
A billion data records were compromised worldwide in 2014 due to more than 1,500 online security breaches, according to a report Thursday from Dutch security firm Gemalto.
Last year saw a 49 percent increase in breaches and a 78 percent rise in data records stolen, compared to 2013.
Gemalto, a global leader in digital security detection, claimed identity theft was the largest category of attack, with 54 percent of the breaches involving hackers stealing personal data such as email addresses, names, passwords and banking data.
“We're clearly seeing a shift in the tactics of cybercriminals, with long-term identity theft becoming more of a goal than the immediacy of stealing a credit card number," Tsion Gonen, vice president of strategy for identity and data protection at Gemalto. “Identity theft could lead to the opening of new fraudulent credit accounts, creating false identities for criminal enterprises, or a host of other serious crimes.”
The numbers come soon after the United States announced it was creating a new agency to share cybersecurity information amongst different governmental groups, and Facebook launched a new social platform specifically for cybersecurity specialists.
The last few months saw massive breaches at institutions including JPMorgan Chase, Target, eBay and, most recently, health insurer Anthem, where the records of as many as 80 million customers were compromised.
“As data breaches become more personal, we're starting to see that the universe of risk exposure for the average person is expanding,” Gonen added.
Cyber-attacks are also becoming more severe, such as November’s brutal hacking of film studio Sony Pictures, where hackers absconded with not just personal data, but embarrassing internal emails and unreleased films.
Gemalto believes companies must improve identity control, access management and encryption in order to keep records private. Encryption, especially, turns records useless if hackers are able to steal it.
