The UK has been named the 7th most breached country globally and Cybersecurity firm Surfshark have found that the average brit has likely had their data breached around 4 times. Eek.
The findings are equally interesting and scary and will probably make you want to go and change a few passwords. In total 247.1M British accounts have been breached since 2004, the year when breaches became widespread. The most affected data type after email addresses in the UK is password (205M), endangering 80% of leaked email addresses. This means that there is a high likelihood that a particular username was grouped with a password, giving criminals direct access to social media profiles or other online services.
“Statistically speaking, a single Brit has had around 4 instances in which they were victims of data breaches. Europe accounts for 30% of all global breaches, and while half of these happen in Russia, the UK also happens to have exceptionally high breach rates. Considering that most European countries have robust cybersecurity measures in place, this comes as a surprise and calls for better personal data storing and management practices.”
-Agneska Sablovskaja, Data Researcher, Surfshark
Breached data is a global issue
Data breaches are unfortunately a global issue with the top three most breached countries being the US (2.3B breached users), Russia (2.2B), and China (987M).
The top five European countries with the most breaches in descending order are Russia (2.2B breached users), Germany (426.7M), France (395.1M), UK (247.1M) and Italy (239.8M).
The number of global breaches are rising again. In Q1 of 2022, 304 accounts were being breached every minute. In the present quarter, however, breach rates are 6.7% higher. On a positive note, the trend in the UK is the opposite. Breach rate is 34.3% lower now than it was in Q1, falling from around 3 to 2 breached accounts per minute.
For business owners it is especially important that data is protected. It’s a good idea to pay more attention to how you are securing your data online such as using strong passwords and updating account information regularly.
