Online security is an ever increasing concern, with new data-breaches occurring almost monthly – and more and more scams and hacks being thrust upon the public. Symantec has published the latest Website Security Threat Report and there are some rather alarming statistics within the report. Here are just some key statistics:
- 318 data breaches reported in 2015
- 429 million identities exposed in 2015
- 200% increase in tech support scams in 2015
- 78% of scanned websites in 2015 had vulnerabilities – 15% of them were critical
- Personal information such as full names, home addresses, birth-dates, and government ID numbers was the most commonly exposed personal information.
- The price of credit card information and email addresses dropped in 2015
- Small businesses in 2015 accounted for 43% of spear-phishing attacks
If you haven’t gotten serious about your own internet security, this should serve as a serious wake-up call. Protect your online identity – pay attention where you input your personal information, and urge your favorite websites to secure and encrypt your data with SSL/TLS.
Nearly 40% of all downstream internet traffic in the US is now encrypted, according to research from Sandvine, and this is expected to grow to more than 70% of the world’s internet traffic over the year.
Check out the in-depth Symantec Website Security Threat Report here, it’s a great read that goes in-depth about all the various security issues we faced in 2015, and what the Internet as a whole is doing to help decrease these numbers for the coming years – and believe it or not these numbers ARE decreasing. For example the average amount of identities exposed per breach in 2015 has decreased, and the number of breaches reported that did not expose any identities increased by 85 percent!