Leading American video game company Electronic Arts (EA) recently disclosed a breach that resulted in the theft of hundreds of gigabytes of data. The exfiltrated information included source code and software that power popular games like FIFA and Battlefield. What’s notable about this attack is that the attackers gained access to EA’s infrastructure through stolen Slack cookies that contained cached employee login credentials.

If you're an Australian business reading this, there's a 30% chance you will suffer a data breach. Such cutthroat statistics, as uncomfortable as they are to read, are important to be aware of if you want to avoid becoming one. To help you achieve a data-driven approach to cybersecurity, we've aggregated some of the most critical data breach stats for Australian businesses. This list also includes global data breach statistics that could be a window into Australia's future modified threat landscape.

Cybercrime has been on the rise for years now, and it is not showing any signs of slowing down. Indeed, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 just fueled the situation, and the number of attacks is escalating. Here are important data breach statistics that can help you better understand the risk landscape for 2021.

Many compliance standards focus on protecting individual personal information and sensitive data in a world rife with cyber-attacks and data breaches. Now, companies need to make their systems immune to digital intrusion and prepared to reduce the attack surface for strong information security measures around private information. Data breaches are becoming a norm through the more and more rapid transition of physical businesses to online businesses and more online activities.

The recent slate of breaches and regulatory actions has prompted many companies who had been doing the minimum in terms of proactive cyber risk management to rethink their approach. In the U.S., new regulations are emerging (for states like Virginia, Colorado, Massachusetts and many others), and existing regulators are increasing their enforcement, as we’ve seen by the NY Dept of Financial Services (NYDFS) and the SEC.

Data breaches in Australia are on the rise, particularly in the financial and healthcare industries. In an effort to DISRUPT this pernicious trend, the Australian government is revising its cybersecurity frameworks and policies to strengthen resilience against nation-state threat actors. But Australian businesses cannot solely rely on the government's cybersecurity initiatives. Even the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) admits that proposed security frameworks only raise the baseline of security.

These days, it’s not a matter if your password will be breached but when. Major websites experience massive data breaches at an alarming rate. Have I Been Pwned currently has records from 543 sites comprising 11.4 billion accounts. This includes well-known names like Wattpad, MySpace, and Facebook. This is an 84% increase in the number of sites and a 115% increase in the number of accounts from when I published the first version of this article in 2018.

Data breaches are costing organizations millions of dollars on average. In its 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report, IBM found that a data breach cost the average organization $3.86 million. This price tag was even greater for organizations located in the United States and operating in the healthcare industry at $8.64 million and $7.13 million, respectively. What’s behind this price tag, you ask?

Industries most impacted in 2019 continued to be hard hit in both 2020 and so far in 2021, including healthcare, education and financial services. However, the greatest percentage increases occurred in industries that had been generally spared in 2019. The overall implication is that data attacks became broader and deeper during the pandemic, a trend that continues during the recovery.

A data breach is defined as the unauthorized access to sensitive information about a person – whether it's their personal, financial information, passwords, credit card numbers, social security number, and other sensitive information. It is one of the most costly and damaging issues that can plague any person and company. Unfortunately, it has become a far too common occurrence these days as hackers constantly find ways to break even the most complicated security measures.