Every Consumer Faces Unique Identity Risks: Why It Matters to Credit Unions — and How They Can Help
While the number of data breaches has long been considered by financial and cybersecurity observers in monitoring data compromise and identity crime trends, a better indicator is emerging: breach severity.
The severity of a data breach is primarily determined by the type of personally identifiable information (PII) exposed. While the number of records stolen often gains media attention, a breach’s severity score is based on what type of records and data were stolen since that determines the crimes and abuse that can be executed. Stolen Social Security numbers have a greater potential for abuse than an exposed address, for instance.
Severity risk scores are therefore highly dynamic from breach to breach.
Breach severity is the highest it’s been in two years
As a global information and insights company — and one of the few organizations assessing data breach severity — TransUnion recently observed a significant increase. According to its analysis shared at the 2024 FinovateSpring conference, during the first quarter of 2024, data breach severity rose to its highest level in two years, up 31% from the same period last year.
TransUnion’s research showed this increase was primarily due to a high level of Social Security number exposures — which occurred in 78% of all publicly reported breaches during Q1 2024. That’s a significant rise from the same period in 2023 when Social Security numbers were exposed in 51% of breaches.
Coupled with the high number of credit and debit card data exposures so far in 2024, the risks to financial consumers continue to reach record levels.
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