The trove of 1.3 million RDP credentials leaked recently is yet again proof that, In the underground economy, initial access brokerage is a flourishing market. Cybercriminals are outsourcing the initial access stage of the attack, so they can better focus on the execution and act more quickly.

The rising trend in data breaches continues to angle upwards, and as a result, there has never been a more precarious time in history to launch and maintain a successful business. To prevent the repetition of mistakes that result in data theft, we’ve compiled a list of the 56 biggest data breaches in history, including recent data breaches in 2021. Click on the table of contents dropdown above for a list of all the companies in this post.

Year after year, cyberattackers cause unnecessary stress for organizations, disrupting innovation and impacting profit. 2020 was no different – last year brought a bevy of damaging breaches that cost organizations precious money and time they couldn’t get back. Ranging from thousands to billions of records exposed, breaches big and small gave threat actors access to sensitive information like email addresses, locations, passwords, dates of birth, and more.

The personal information of over 500 million Facebook users has been published on a hacker forum on the dark web. To put the impact into perspective, in 2019, the population of the entire United States was 328.2 million. This data was stolen in 2019 after a vulnerability in Facebook’s ‘Add Friend” function was exploited.

You’ve just been breached. What do you do next? Depending on personality, preparation, and ability under crisis, there are a variety of responses to choose from, some effective and some not. Hopefully, you’re the rare breed who plans in advance how to respond. Even better if this planning includes how to prevent them. But to execute a logical, effective response, keep reading.