The Leaking Vault – Five Years of Data Breaches
A study conducted by Suzanne Widup
Published by the Digital Forensics Association
Publication Date: July 2010
The Leaking Vault study presents data on
2,807 data breach incidents—and is the largest study of its kind to date. Information was gleaned from the organizations that track these breaches, government sites, and media reports. These incidents represent data from 28 countries, including the United States.
This study covers breaches from 2005 through 2009, and includes over 721.9 million known records disclosed. On average, these organizations lost 395,362 people’s data per day, every day from January 1, 2005 through December 31, 2009. With just over 300 million U.S. citizens, (and with U.S. record losses at 630.5 million), this means that each U.S. citizen’s data could have been exposed more than twice on average [24].
Using figures from the recent Cost of a Data Breach study, a figure of $139
billion was calculated as the estimated cost over the five years of the study.
