Financial Services Breaches Less Common, More Damaging, Than Those in Other Sectors

Breaches at financial services firms were a small percentage of the total breaches in 2019, but they delivered more than 60% of all the records stolen into criminals' hands. On average, a financial services breach exposed more records than those in healthcare, government, education, or other business incidents.

A new report by Bitglass provides these details along with information such as the $388 average cost per breached financial services record. That number is far in excess of the $183 per record average for the tech sector and especially sobering in light of the more than 100 million individuals affected by breaches.

According to the report, created with data compiled from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) and the Ponemon institute, only 7% of the data breaches in 2019 occurred in the financial services sector, compared with 43% in general business and 36% in healthcare. Of the breaches in financial services, three-quarters were due to either external hackers or malware, while 6% were the result of insider threats.

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