Fewer Data Breaches Occurred Last Year, Study Finds

Data breaches fell in number by 67.6% YoY in 2022, according to a study by Surfshark. 

Only 310,855,487 accounts were leaked worldwide last year -- down from 959,327,963 in 2021. 

There were 10 accounts leaked per second, versus 30 in 2021.  

The five most-breached countries accounted for two-thirds of all leaked accounts in 2022, and were, in order: 

  1. Russia — 104,822,978
  2. China — 34,032,372 
  3. The U.S. — 23,545,821 
  4. France — 20,144,766
  5. Indonesia — 14,741,55

The U.S. improved — in 2021, it was the most-breached country, with 209.8 million leaked accounts. 

In terms of sheer growth, the biggest spikes were seen in Indonesia (269%), Sri Lanka (204%), Russia (191%), Uzbekistan (73%) and China (45%). 

Russia jumped from the fourth slot in 2021 roundup to No. 1 in 2022, accounting for a third of all leaked accounts. 

In contrast, Brazil saw a decrease from 33 million in 2021 to 8.7 million in 2022. India went from 78.6 million in 2021 to 4.7 million in 2022. And Iran fell from second in 2021 to 43rd in 2022, with 316,000 leaked accounts.  

Surfshark’s independent partners collected user data from breached databases that appeared online. 

The company sorted through over 27,000 leaked databases and created approximately 5 billion data combinations. Its researchers sorted these combinations based on specific data points, such as countries, and performed a statistical analysis of their findings.

 

 

 

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