The Gemalto company, that specialises in digital security, has estimated that every second, 35 leakages occur worldwide. In total, in the first half of 2016, there were recorded 974 incidents in the global database Breach Level Index, managed by Gemalto. It is 15% more than in the second half of 2015. According to Breach Level Index, in Russia there were only 4 leakages in six months. For comparison, in the USA there were recorded 728 incidents, in the UK - 61, in Japan - 7. In 29 cases, recorded by Breach Level Index in the first half of 2016, the scale of leakages exceeded one million records, but in most cases information about the amount of compromised data is unknown. The global "flow" of stolen or lost data in six months increased by one third, compared with the previous six months, and approached 555 million records. By the end of the year, according to Gemalto's experts, the global amount of leakages will exceed one billion. In the first half of 2016, the main threat came from outside, and external attacks resulted in 69% of incidents. The second most relevant source of leakages is accidental data loss (18%), insiders' actions take the second place in the list of main risks (9%). Cybercriminals were interested the most in the users’ personal data: 64% of leakages is connected with hacking accounts. The most affected industry was healthcare which accounted for 27% of incidents. Gemalto has been renewing the Breach Level Index base since 2013. Since then, hackers have gained unauthorised access to 4.8 billion data records. The Gemalto experts do not just fix the number of incidents around the world, but conduct a comparative analysis to distinguish minor incidents from serious ones.

"Leakage of hundred million usernames is unlikely to have the same devastating effect as leakage of one million accounts with social security numbers (SSN) and other personal information that can be used for financial gain," explained Jason Hart, Gemalto’s head of the technical department on data protection.