2008 Data Breach Analysis – By Industry

When reviewing the 2008 Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s data breach statistics we also broke down the attacks by the industry: Business, Education, Government and Medical. Within each of these industry we also analysed the number of reported breaches, number of potential victims reported and the number of breaches where the number of victims were unknown:

Businesses: 95 total reported breaches that exposed 21.4 million Americans, and where 41 (or 43%) of the business breaches could not quantify the number of Americans affected.

Education: 96 total reported breaches that exposed 3.2 million Americans, and where 13 (or 14%) of the education breaches could not quantify the number of Americans affected.

Government: 67 total reported breaches that exposed 4.8 million Americans, and where 16 (or 24%) of the government breaches could not quantify the number of Americans affected.

Medical: 52 total reported breaches that exposed 4.3 million Americans, and where 7 (or 13%) of the medical breaches could not quantify the number of Americans affected.

While different industries may have different direct/indirect costs associated with a data breach, the rule of thumb I use here is $2,000 per victim. Therefore, in 2008, the cost of a data breach per industry:

Business: $42.7 Billion
Education: $6.31B
Government: $9.6B
Medical: $8.7B