Apologising over its Breach Level Index Report 2018 about Aadhar data breach, Gemalto withdrew a press release issued in India on October 15 by saying that the ‘Breach Level Index Report 2018’ has been updated as the global digital security leader has not been able to track any verified or substantiated data breach of Aadhaar database of UIDAI.
“Gemalto profusely regrets on its Breach Level Index Report 2018 and the subsequent press release issued in India on 15th October where it has by mistake taken into account an unverified news article about alleged Aadhaar data breach,” the digital security major said.
“Gemalto has updated its Breach Level Index Report 2018 and wants to make it clear that it was an error in the above said report which has been corrected and all concerned should take note of it that we have not been able to track any verified or substantiated data breach of Aadhaar database of UIDAI. As a result, Gemalto has withdrawn this alleged data from the Breach Level Index. Any inconvenience caused to UIDAI is deeply regretted. As such, Gemalto updates the press release as follows,” the company added.
Releasing its latest findings of the Breach Level Index, a global database of public data breaches, Gemalto said that 944 data breaches led to 3.2 billion data records being compromised worldwide in the first half of 2018.
“Compared to the same period in 2017, the number of lost, stolen or compromised records increased by a staggering 72 percent, though the total number of breaches slightly decreased over the same period, signaling an increase in the severity of each incident,” said the Breach Level Index Report 2018.
A total of six social media breaches, including the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook incident, accounted for over 56 percent of total records compromised. Of the 944 data breaches, 189 (20 percent of all breaches) had an unknown or unaccounted number of compromised data records, the report added.
“Obviously, this year social media has been the top industry and threat vector for the compromise of personal data, a trend we can expect to continue with more and more sectors leveraging these platforms to reach key audiences, especially political teams gearing up for major elections,” said Jason Hart, vice president and chief technology officer for data protection at Gemalto.
“We also expect to see more data breaches reported by European Union countries bound by the new General Data Protection Regulation and in Australia with the new Notifiable Data Breaches law. We should be careful not to misconstrue this as an increase in overall incidents in these areas but rather as a more accurate reflection of what is actually going on,” he added.
The report finds that India accounts for less than one per cent of the global breaches in terms of records compromised or stolen or revealed.
The United States is still by far and away the most popular target for attacks, representing more than 57 percent of global breaches and accounting for 97 percent of all records stolen.
