"Aussie Data Breaches Surge 489% in Q4 2022"

Security researchers at Surfshark have found that Australia had the highest “data breach density” in the world as of the fourth quarter.  On average, 7387 user accounts were leaked per 100,000 Australians during the first two months of this quarter, making its breach density 24 times higher than the global average.  The researchers noted that Russia came in second (2568 accounts per 100,000), followed by Turkey (2421 per 100,000).  The researchers stated that so far this quarter, an average of 22 Australian accounts have been breached every minute, versus just two in the previous quarter.  This is primarily down to the 1.88 million Australian user profiles stolen during October and November, which itself is up from 300,000 in Q3 2022.  The researchers noted that this is a 489% increase, Australia’s highest quarterly spike in data breach count this decade.  The researchers noted that globally, data breaches have gone down by 70.8% from October to November.  In Australia, however, data breaches have surged by 1550%, from 107,659 in October to 1,776,065 in November.  The researchers noted that Australia is still only 16th in the world by total data breach count.  Since 2004, the country has had 125.8 million accounts breached versus 9.73 billion in the US.  

Infosecurity reports: "Aussie Data Breaches Surge 489% in Q4 2022"