Advisen anticipates cyber-related events during the first half of 2014—now at a count of 800—will eclipse the total for the first six month of 2013.
Events are added to Advisen’s Loss Insight database daily, making total counts fluid. As of July 17, there are 800 cyber events for the first half of 2014 in the database, compared to 847 events logged for 2013 during the same period. The event-count as of June 30 in 2013 is currently 796.
Among events recorded so far this year, LinkedIn is at the top of the list since emails of its 260 million members were potentially exposed by Sell Hack, a free plug-in extension for certain browsers that revealed emails of LinkedIn accounts even if users are not connected. On 31 March LinkedIn’s legal team delivered Sell Hack a cease-and-desist letter. The plug-in no longer works on LinkedIn pages.
Next is eBay, which asked all of its 145 million users to change passwords due to a cyber attack.
A user and hacker informed social networking platform Foursquare that its 45 million users were vulnerable to having emails exposed with a few lines of scripting tool. Foursquare’s security team fixed the issue.
Advisen’s Loss Insight data has grown to include more than 11,100 events. This count has more than tripled since 2012. Nearly 2,500 events have been logged in the database so far this year.
Events include more than breaches. For instance, Privacy Violations, Improper Collection of Digital Data and Improper Disposal, Loss or Theft of printed records are included in the overall total.
As the chart above illustrates, Digital Data Breach, Loss or Theft makes up nearly half of all events, with System/Network Security Violation or Disruption next. About 8,100 events are from these categories, which are considered traditional breaches.
Over time, Digital Data Breach and Network Security Violations have also made up most of Advisen’s events count. Since 2009, the proportion of events involving printed records (yellow) has narrowed.
Businesses classified as Services account for a majority of cyber events. Services includes personal, business, health and education services; engineering; auto repair; amusement and recreation; and motion pictures.
