Breaches. Unfortunately, they just keep growing and growing.

In 2013, 41 million Target customers were affected by a massive cyberattack. In 2017, Equifax revealed over 143 million people were affected by a breach, and in 2018, Marriott announced cybercriminals had stolen the data of 500 million customers.

Earlier this week, it was reported that a whopping 763 million records from Verifications.io were leaked. Clearly, we’ve entered into new breach territory.

Entrust CEO Cindy Provin, on the Verifications.io breach

So, what does this mean for long-suffering (and no doubt, fed-up) consumers? Says Entrust CEO Cindy Provin:

A leak of 763 million records is massive. Not only were emails publicly accessible for anyone with an internet connection, but phone numbers, birth dates, mortgage amounts, interest rates and social media accounts were also exposed. This is like winning a lottery for cyber-criminals who can easily piece together the information and use it as bait for phishing attacks and identity theft to cash in on even more sensitive information.

A leak of this magnitude certainly validates what we heard from consumers in a recent survey about cyber-security: 68% of Americans fear identity theft – and for good reason. Organizations need to be vigilant in today’s cybereconomy and extend their encryption policies to cover all personally identifiable information, so that it becomes useless should it fall into the wrong hands.

For more information on how Entrust empowers businesses to protect critical data, check out our product page.