Dive Brief:
- Global digital security company Gemalto's new report, "2015 First Half Review," shows healthcare had the most data breaches in the first half of 2015 with 187, representing 21% of total breaches across all sectors.
- Healthcare also had the most data records lost at 84.4 million, about 34% of the total.
- Despite the high number of breaches, the report showed the first half of 2015 was actually down from the first half of 2014, which had 236 data breaches.
Dive Insight:
According to Gemalto, these numbers reflect a big shift from several years ago when healthcare had much fewer data breaches. The second half of 2014 showed healthcare only accounted for 5.2% of stolen data.
Breaking down the first half of 2015 numbers, identity theft was the cause of 472 data breaches in all sectors, accounting for 53% of attacks.
Gemalto suggested companies need to shift their security strategies from breach prevention to breach acceptance and not to focus on network perimeter security technologies. "The problem is that many enterprises today rely on them as the foundation of their information security strategies, and, unfortunately, there is really no fool-proof way to prevent a breach from occurring. Alarmingly, market trends show that the lion's share of organizations have no plans to change this approach," the report stated.