After year-over-year increases in the number of reported data breaches, Risk Based Security has released the results of their Q1 2018 Data Breach QuickView Report, showing the number of breaches disclosed in the first three months of the year fell to 686 compared with 1,444 breaches reported in Q1 2017. The number of records compromised in the quarter remained high, with more than 1.4 billion records exposed.
“We knew we were seeing less activity than prior quarters, but we were still surprised by the final tally,” said Inga Goddijn, executive vice president at Risk Based Security. “We were geared up for a wave of activity targeting tax filing data that never fully materialized as expected.” Indeed, in Q1 2017 there were over 200 instances of phishing for employee W2 data. At the end of April 2018, that activity had waned to just over 30 such reported events.