The number of stolen data records in breaches has surged by 233% year-on-year between January and March to more than 200 million records, which is about 93,000 records stolen data every hour, according a report.
SafeNet Breach Level Index (BLI) said during the first quarter of the year 254 data breaches were reported, with four of the five worst data breaches in South Korea.
Of those, a mere 1% was "secure breaches," or breaches where strong encryption, key management, or authentication solutions protected the data from being used.
South Korea reported a loss of 158 million stolen records across a variety of industries, representing 79% of the total number of stolen records worldwide.
Victims of the South Korean breaches included the Korea Credit Bureau, Korean Medical Association, Korea Telecom, and Korean search portal Naver.
SafeNet chief strategy officer Tsion Gonen said tools like the Breach Level Index can help companies and the public understand the severity of breaches.
"In differentiating between secure and insecure breaches, it’s important to look at which victims have protected their data with encryption to limit the damage from a breach and render the date unusable to cyber criminals," Gonen said.
The prime target of the breach was the financial industry, which accounted for more than half of data stolen, and 14% of the number of breaches, while healthcare recorded a quarter of the breaches and 9% of the all stolen data.
Tech accounted for a fifth of the stolen data, and the retail sector 1% of the stolen data and a tenth of breaches.
