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notifications due to the law’s strict breach reporting requirements.70 More |
than a dozen organizations had breaches involving more than 100 million |
records each.71 One breach involved 1.1 billion records of India’s national |
identification database.72 Criminals were offering access to people’s |
personal data for a fee, as well as software that could print out identification |
cards necessary for certain government services. |
Marriott announced a breach of 500 million records. The breach began |
in the Starwood hotel chain’s system back in 2014. Marriott acquired |
Starwood in 2016, but the breach wasn’t discovered until 2018.73 The |
hackers used a Trojan horse, which allowed them to remotely access the |
system. The hackers were able to gain access to credit card data and |
passport numbers, which unfortunately were unencrypted.74 |
In 2019, the number of breaches increased by more than 50 percent from |
the past four years.75 As early as August 2019, the year was proclaimed to |
be a “landmark” year.76 According to Risk Based Security: “On May 2, |
2019, we hit a data breach milestone. The Cyber Risk Analytics research |
team added the 40,000th breach entry to our ever-expanding data breach |
database.”77 Continuing the trend, 2019 was labeled “the worst year on |
record” for data breach activity—“more breaches reported, more data |
exposed, and more credentials dumped online.”78 |
Early in the year, a large treasure trove of 773 million email and 21 |
million passwords were posted in a hacker forum online. The data was |
called “Collection #1.”79 Hackers obtained 20 million records from the |
American Medical Collection Agency (AMCA). Due to the anticipated |
costs of the data breach, AMCA filed for bankruptcy protection, an ironic |
move because its business was debt collection.80 |
In the fall of 2019, the FBI warned: “Ransomware attacks are becoming |
more targeted, sophisticated, and costly, even as the overall frequency of |
attacks remains consistent.”81 Even worse, a new form of ransomware |
emerged. Unlike ransomware that just locks up your files, this new type of |
ransomware attack (dubbed “double extortion”) also threatens to release |
personal data to the public.82 When organizations refused to pay ransoms |
late in 2019, hackers behind Maze ransomware started posting the personal |
data online.83 |
A NEVER-ENDING SAGA |
The saga over the past 15 years reads like a Shakespearean tragedy. Or, |
perhaps more aptly, it has the plot of a typical work of Franz Kafka—things |
start out badly, then get worse. |
The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a public interest organization, keeps |
a database of publicly reported data breaches. When this manuscript was |
finalized, more than 9,000 data breaches have been reported involving more |
than 11.6 billion records.84 There are many other organizations keeping |
track, and their numbers are just as ugly—if not uglier. |
The numbers fluctuate each year, but the general trend is more breaches |
and compromised records with no improvement in sight.85 |
TABLE 2.1 A CHRONOLOGY OF DATA BREACHES BY THE PRIVACY RIGHTS |
CLEARINGHOUSE |
Year |
Number of |
Reported Breaches |
Number of |
Records Compromised |
2005 |
136 |
55,101,241 |
2006 |
482 |
68,580,749 |
2007 |
455 |
149,957,907 |
2008 |
355 |
130,896,900 |
2009 |
270 |
251,575,814 |
2010 |
801 |
140,937,393 |
2011 |
793 |
447,901,379 |
2012 |
885 |
298,766,788 |
2013 |
889 |
158,787,838 |
2014 |
868 |
1,313,623,460 |
2015 |
540 |
318,795,437 |
2016 |
822 |
4,815,010,518 |
2017 |
766 |
2,048,397,757 |
2018 |
668 |
1,369,452,404 |
2019 |
stats not yet available |
stats not yet available |
2020 |
stats not yet available |