Data breaches are far more common than one might think. In fact, the global average cost of a data breach this year alone has been USD 4.45 million, representing a 15 percent increase over the last three years. Keep in mind, this year still has two weeks to go, so this number may slightly increase.
More than 50 percent of organizations say they plan to increase security investments resulting from a breach, including employee training, incident response planning and testing, and threat detection and response tools.
As technology advances and organizations start relying more and more on digital systems, it has been a critical goal to not only protect sensitive data, but to also preserve customer trust and ensure business continuity.
Let’s take a look at some of the data breaches that occurred in 2023.
Sharp HealthCare
On February 6, Sharp HealthCare — the largest healthcare provider in San Diego CA — notified nearly 63,000 patients that their personal information had been exposed during an attack on the company’s website. Compromised information included social security numbers, health insurance data, and private health records, but no bank account or credit card information was taken.
MailChimp
On January 18, just six months after its previous one, MailChimp reported a hacker gained access to its systems via a well-coordinated social engineering attack. The hacker was able to access the data of 133 MailChimp accounts.
T-Mobile
On January 19, T-Mobile reported it had suffered another data breach that impacted 37 million customers whose data was accessed by hackers. While the company said it discovered the issue on January 5th, cyber attackers had been exfiltrating data from T-Mobile’s systems since November 2022.
Not too soon before this, in 2022, data was compromised for 76 million customers, which prompted the company to invest $150 million in upgrades to its data security.
T-Mobile went on to experience yet another breach on May 1, 2023 that affected 800 customers, whereby contact information, ID cards, and social security numbers were stolen from PIN-protected accounts.
U.S. House of Representatives
On March 9, there was a breach of a Washington DC-based healthcare provider responsible for handling sensitive data belonging to 170,000 federal legislators and their families.
Pizza Hut/KFC
On April 10, Yum! Brands – owner of fast food chains Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell – revealed that customers’ personal data was exposed as part of a ransomware attack that occurred back in January. Names, drivers’ license information, and ID card info were all stolen.
Intellihartx
On June 9, the Healthcare management firm Intellihartx reported that hackers had stolen the medical details of more than a half million patients, including social security numbers. While the breach happened in January, it was not discovered until April.
On June 19, hackers belonging to the BlackCat ransomware gang threatened Reddit with leaking 80GB of confidential data stolen from its servers back in February. They demanded a $4.5 million payout and also demanded that Reddit renege on its new pricing policy that had previously been met with widespread backlash.
Roblox
Reported on July 21, data belonging to nearly 4,000 members of Roblox’s developer community was exposed in a leak, including email addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth of individuals who had attended Roblox developer conferences between 2017 and 2020.
Maximus
U.S. government contractor Maximus suffered a large data breach on July 27, where hackers accessed the health-related data of between eight and 11 million citizens.
Forever 21
On August 31, fashion retailer Forever 21 reported that a data breach impacted 500,000 customers earlier in the year. Stolen information included names, dates of birth, social security numbers, and bank account information – all accessed by an unauthorized third party.
Freecycle
Seven million Freecycle users were affected by a data breach of the nonprofit’s systems on September 4. Hackers obtained user IDs and email addresses.
Topgolf Callaway
On September 5, U.S. golf club manufacturer Topgolf Callaway experienced a data breach that affected more than one million customers. Stolen data included full names, shipping and email addresses, phone numbers, passwords, and security question answers.
In Conclusion
As said previously, there are still a couple of more months to go in 2023, so it will be interesting to see how many more data breaches will take place around the nation. Protect your organization now so the next statistic won’t be you.
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