In the decade between 2014 and November 2023, the US government and its various entities and endpoints suffered exactly 1,283 data breaches.
These breaches compromised 201,184,801 documents, costing the government – and therefore the average taxpayer – more than $30 billion, new research shows.
According to Comparitech's report, 2019 was the biggest year for breaches as there were 226 recorded incidents that year.
Ransomware Dangers
The company added that the following year, 2020, was just as disastrous, with 182 incidents recorded. The year before, 2018, had the highest number of affected records, exactly 84,794,645.
This year also promises to be a record. To date, there have been 137 recorded government breaches, affecting 22.4 million records. The number of infringements is already greater than last year's 120 infringements. The number of records involved is more than four times the number of breaches in 2022 (5 million).
The largest data breach to affect a US government agency in the past decade occurred in 2018, when the US Postal Service was hacked and 60 million records were stolen. It is closely followed by the 2015 Office of Personnel Management hack, which exposed 21.5 million records of current and former U.S. government officials. Finally, there is the California Secretary of State incident in 2017, which exposed 19.2 million records.
Ransomware remains one of the biggest threats to these organizations, Comparitech concludes, stating that it is responsible for almost half of the attacks carried out so far this year (63). “According to data collected by our US ransomware tracker, government agencies see an average ransom of more than $920,000,” the report claims. “It is known that three government agencies have paid. The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department paid $1.1 million to its hackers, the City of Montclair paid $450,000 and Hinds County paid $300,000.”