US Is the Data Theft Capital of the World

A new report by Uswitch has revealed which countries have been the worst hit by data breaches and the US ranks first with nearly 19 million data records stolen. That’s more than 4X the next closest country (South Korea).

Canada, the UK, and Australia rounded out the top five.

China and India aren’t listed anywhere in the top 20. Tight government control and security law may play a role in China. India’s a different story. There have been more than 394 million cases of data breaches in India since 2013, according to the study, but when you break it down per capita, India ranks 22nd.

Biggest Data Breaches of the Decade

The Yahoo! data breaches in 2013–2014 still remains the largest when more than 3 billion records wee compromised. Interestingly, the breach at Equifax in 2017 that cost the company $1.4 billion didn’t even make the top 10 despite exposing the records of some 147 million users.

You can see the full study here.