Data breaches exposing millions of personal records are becoming the new normal. Data leaks reached an all-time high, rising by 492% to a record 27 billion in the first half of 2020.
The data acquired by Atlas VPN revealed a total of 2,037 publicly reported breaches in the first half of 2020. Compared to the same period last year, the number of leaked records through June 30th grew nearly sixfold from 4,7 billion to over 27 billion records.
The amount of records exposed in the first half of 2020 is 12 billion more than the total number of records leaked during the entirety of 2019. Additionally, it is more than four times higher than any six month time period between 2013 and 2020.
Misconfigured databases and services were revealed to be the primary cause of the growing number of data leaks. Misconfiguration may leave entire databases open and freely accessible to anyone, which consequently may lead to bad actors taking advantage of the sensitive data.
