Data Breaches so far in 2024
Several major data breaches have occurred in 2024, affecting millions of individuals across various sectors. Here are some of the most significant breaches reported so far:
## Telecommunications Sector
AT&T experienced two major data breaches in 2024:
1. In July, cyber-criminals stole phone numbers and call records of "nearly all" AT&T customers (around 110 million people) over a six-month period in 2022[1].
2. In March, 73 million AT&T customer records were dumped online, including names, phone numbers, and postal addresses[1].
## Healthcare Sector
Several large healthcare data breaches have been reported:
1. Kaiser Permanente reported a breach affecting up to 13.4 million Americans, potentially exposing personal information to third parties like Google, Bing, and X[4].
2. Concentra Health Services reported a breach impacting nearly 4 million people due to an incident with a third-party vendor[4].
3. Geisinger, a Pennsylvania health system, suffered a breach affecting more than 1.2 million individuals[4].
## Financial Sector
Bank of America experienced a data breach affecting tens of thousands of customers. The breach was related to a ransomware attack on one of the bank's service providers, exposing personal information including names, addresses, social security numbers, and some banking details[2].
## Technology Companies
1. Trello, a project management software platform, had data from 15 million users leaked on the dark web[2].
2. Anthropic, an AI startup, experienced a small data leak involving non-sensitive customer information[2].
## Other Notable Breaches
1. Truist Bank, one of America's largest banks, revealed a data breach from October 2023 that exposed employee information[2].
2. Tile, the tracker device company, reported a database breach affecting customer data including names, addresses, and device identification numbers[2].
3. Ticketmaster confirmed a data breach impacting over 560 million customers, exposing personal information and partial payment details[2].
The total number of known records breached in the first half of 2024 reached a staggering 6,845,908,997 across 2,741 publicly disclosed incidents[3]. This figure underscores the scale and frequency of data breaches in 2024, highlighting the ongoing challenges in cybersecurity across various industries.
Citations:
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/12/2024-in-data-breaches-1-billion-stolen-records-and-rising/
[2] https://tech.co/news/data-breaches-updated-list
[3] https://www.itgovernanceusa.com/blog/data-breaches-and-cyber-attacks-in-2024-in-the-usa
[4] https://www.chiefhealthcareexecutive.com/view/the-top-10-health-data-breaches-of-the-first-half-of-2024
[5] https://www.foxnews.com/tech/watch-out-biggest-data-breaches-2024-so-far
[6] https://www.bluefin.com/bluefin-news/biggest-data-breaches-year-2024/
[7] https://purplesec.us/breach-report/
[8] https://www.breachsense.com/breaches/
(The above was done with Perplexity.ai) Link (but I did review it before I posted)
We have to be more selective with who we share are data with. I was part of the Equifax breach and I've had my credit frozen with all three credit bureaus since then. It is a shame that we have to go through things like these on a regular basis but its like this because a lot of people that steal this information considers what they do a job just like cybersecurity experts have a job to stop attacks. So remember there are people that are professionals at taking data so there are solutions but they aren't simple one.
