According to Company Data Breach Tracker, over 346 million people were affected by data breach accounts in the first four months of 2023. Most of those - 235 million - were Twitter users when Elon Musk took over. The most breaches by month were in January - 288 million - while there were less than two million breaches in April.
Most of the breaches - over 289 million - were caused by threat actors. In decreasing order, the remainder were caused by hacking, third party data exposure, and human error.
There are an estimated 8,000 cyber attacks per year according to Cyber Security Intelligence. The measures for protecting against these attacks are well known:
- Train staff to recognize and report phishing emails and suspicious activity.
- Give employees trust to report without fear of consequences.
- Set up secure VPNs.
- Use two factor authentication.
- Update passwords regularly - and make them strong.
The hard part is putting them into practice.