Hackers breached the network by using an employee’s password that they found on the dark web. Hackers used the organization’s network monitoring platform, Orion, to covertly distribute malware to SolarWinds’ customers. In 2020, Russian threat actors executed a supply chain attack by hacking the software vendor SolarWinds. Hackers exploited an unpatched weakness in Equifax’s website to gain access to the network.
Identity theft is the primary concern for individuals, and it can have significant financial implications. Many organizations also have “bug bounty” programs that compensate ethical hackers for identifying possible bugs or vulnerabilities to limit potential data breaches before they occur. While the causes of data breaches may vary considerably, they pose a serious risk to organizations and consumers. The leading cause of data breaches is weak or stolen user credentials, but data security breaches can occur for many different reasons.
One of the most notorious data breaches of recent decades was the cyber-attack launched against major retailer Target in 2013. The Equifax data breach in 2017 is one major example of a large-scale data breach. EFF has worked tirelessly to raise the alarm on this sort of software, and this year worked with AV Comparatives to test the stalkerware detection rate on Android of various major antivirus apps. Amazingly, days after the vulnerability was first reported, there were still thousands of vulnerable self-hosted Sharepoint servers online. Mixpanel, a data analytics company which collects information on users of any app which incorporates its SDK, suffered a major breach in November this year.
According to the Cost of a Data Breach 2025 report, stolen or compromised credentials is one of the top five most common initial attack vectors, accounting for 10% of data breaches and taking up to 186 days to identify. The terms “data breach” and “breach” are often used interchangeably with “cyberattack.” However, not all cyberattacks are data breaches. https://10minutestorage.com/backup-strategies-for-important-digital-documents/ Substack notifies users of data breach affecting nearly 700,000 accounts
- Learn how to implement an effective security control strategy for defending against data breaches in 2026.
- Varonis tackles hundreds of use cases, making it the ultimate platform to stop data breaches and ensure compliance.
- The Hilton incident raised particular concern because Hilton Honors membership data, combined with travel patterns visible in loyalty account histories, enables highly targeted spear-phishing and loyalty fraud at scale.
- Breaches happen through hacking, phishing attacks on employees, misconfigured cloud storage, ransomware, or insiders leaking data.
- You should use network traffic analysis, intrusion detection systems, SIEM data, and log analysis to spot unusual patterns.
- Unauthorized access to networks is often facilitated by weak business account credentials.
Fifty-four percent of cloud environments contain credentials hard-coded in configuration files or containers, according to 2025 vulnerability research. Approximately 34% of cloud-related breaches in 2025 were directly tied to unpatched vulnerabilities, with zero-day exploitation in cloud workloads increasing 19%, fueled by shared software dependencies and third-party libraries. By generating long-lived OAuth tokens through legitimate authorization flows, tricking employees into approving attacker-controlled applications, the ShinyHunters campaign maintained persistent access to over 700 enterprise Salesforce environments without ever exploiting a Salesforce platform vulnerability.
Total Records Exposed in 2025 vs. Prior Years
UnitedHealth Group confirmed that the Change Healthcare ransomware attack, carried out by the ALPHV/BlackCat group in 2024, ultimately compromised the records of 190 million individuals, making it the largest healthcare data breach ever recorded in the United States. Each monthly section leads with the highest-impact incidents of that period, identified by record count, sector sensitivity, or downstream organizational reach. What follows is a month-by-month tracker of the year’s most significant breaches, organized so you can scan by timeframe, identify the organizations involved, understand which data was exposed, and assess scale.
- We’re barely a couple of months into 2025, but this year has already seen several data breaches affecting the personal information of millions of individuals, including everything from student records to phone data to sensitive health information.
- That figure encompasses confirmed breaches, unauthorized exposures, and accidental leaks, and it almost certainly undercounts the real total, since a significant share of breaches go unreported or are discovered months after they occur.
- Even the most stringent people and businesses can still find themselves involved in data breaches.
- The actual breach took place a month earlier, leading to the leak of personal information including names, social security numbers, dates of birth, and financial account numbers and routing numbers.
- See your ROI within 6 months—172% return and less hands-on management
In September 2025, Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters announced a temporary withdrawal from BreachForums, citing mounting law enforcement pressure, but the withdrawal was tactical rather than terminal, with related clusters continuing operations through Telegram-based extortion channels. UK authorities arrested Jubair and Owen Flowers, another suspected Scattered Spider member, in July 2025 in connection with the M&S, Co-op, and Harrods attacks, and Jubair’s alleged involvement in cybercrime Telegram channels linked to some of the most consequential data breaches over the prior four years. On September 18, 2025, the United States charged 19-year-old UK national Thalha Jubair, who allegedly participated in 120 network intrusions.
- Users should pay careful attention to the issue of duplicate reporting when making use of this data or making assertions based on this data.
- Major corporations are prime targets for attackers attempting to cause data breaches because they offer such a large payload.
- The attack began in December 2024, when a threat actor used a single compromised credential to access PowerSchool’s customer support portal, PowerSource.
- SQLI is one of the least sophisticated attacks to carry out, requiring minimal technical knowledge.
- The attackers spent 83 days inside Conduent’s network between October 2024 and January 2025, exfiltrating approximately 8.5 terabytes of data including Social Security numbers, medical records, health insurance details, and Medicaid claims data from the company’s government services infrastructure.
Limited data types or smaller numbers of affected individuals. Highly sensitive data at massive scale – Social Security numbers, financial accounts, medical records, or credentials affecting tens of millions. Companies are legally required to notify affected customers but notifications can take weeks or months. Breaches happen through hacking, phishing attacks on employees, misconfigured cloud storage, ransomware, or insiders leaking data. A data breach is when unauthorised individuals access, steal, or expose private information held about https://exprimamedia.com/choosing-bestandsmanagement-software-for-inventory-control.html you. Share of organizations that reported an AI-related security incident and lacked proper AI access controls.
June 2026
Breach costs for US organizations surged 9% to $10.22 million, the highest average breach cost ever recorded for any country, driven by higher regulatory fines, rising detection and escalation costs, and stricter notification requirements that impose compounding legal exposure in the months following disclosure. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong publicly confirmed the arrest, thanked the Hyderabad Police, and indicated that further arrests could follow as investigations continued across multiple jurisdictions. ZachXBT had reported $45 million in Coinbase user losses to social engineering attacks in early May 2025, and estimates from Elliptic placed total breach-related losses, including remediation and downstream fraud, at up to $400 million.
Librarians are hosting viral ‘Avoiding AI’ workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech
The company behind the data broker National Public Data filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October, months after a massive data breach exposed some 3 billion records affecting around 270 million individuals, according to various analyses by security researchers. The telecoms giant confirmed not one, but two separate data breaches just months apart. We previously reported that security researchers had discovered billions of exposed records online, calling it the “mother of all breaches.” It has been uncovered that the dataset comes from a compilation of multiple breaches. Cybercriminal groups sometimes package multiple exploits into automated exploit kits that make it easier for criminals with little to no technical knowledge to take advantage of exploits.
July 11
The database contained account information for 69 million users, including names, email addresses, zip codes, genders, and dates of birth. The sensitive information, which belongs to individuals who attended Roblox developer conferences held between 2017 and 2020, was reportedly first lifted from Roblox’s systems in 2021. Like many recent data breaches, it seems the MOVEit transfer vulnerability was once again to blame. The firm, based in Kentucky, says that threat actors gained unauthorized access to personal information about millions of patients, as well as a considerable number of employees. The global average cost of a data breach fell to $4.44 million in 2025, the first decrease in five years, driven by AI-assisted detection that saved organizations nearly $1.9 million per breach, but US organizations bucked that trend, hitting an all-time high of $10.22 million per breach, more than double the global figure.
Knowledge of the main reasons that lead to data breaches can help to enhance existing protection measures. It is important to recognize these root causes in order to develop effective measures to prevent data breaches. Below are four infiltration vectors that contribute to these security failures escalating into devastating data breaches. Last but not least, we will discuss micro segmentation advanced monitoring and present how SentinelOne provides powerful data breach prevention and data breach detection.
