More than 5 billion records from 6,500 data breaches were exposed in 2018

In this blog post, we will highlight the enormous impact of data breaches in 2018 as well as the status of GDPR violation since this guideline came into effect in May 2018.

Data Breaches in 2018

“More than 5 billion records from 6,500 data breaches were exposed in 2018” — a report from Risk Based Security says. Hackers have been able to monetize by selling stolen user databases publicly. A new set of databases containing millions of hacked accounts from several websites has been made available for sale on the dark web marketplace.

GDPR Violations in 2018

“More than 59,000 data breach notifications have been reported across the European Economic Area by public and private organizations since the GDPR came into force on 25th May 2018.” — a report from DLA Piper says.

To date, 91 GDPR fines have been reported. “The highest GDPR fine imposed to date is €50 million, which was made against Google on 21st January 2019.” – according to a report from DLA Piper. This decision was made in France in relation to Google’s processing of personal data for advertising purposes without valid authorization, rather than actual data breach.

Analysis

More and more data breaches and GDPR violations are caused by API vulnerabilities (especially around API endpoint and data access controls) that allow hackers to extract millions of records containing personally identifiable information (PII).

FX Labs is the answer to attacks targeting the API layer because our automated platform, APISec, can instantly test every API endpoint and is granular enough to detect the Top 20 API vulnerabilities (including access control vulnerabilities in RBAC and ABAC). No other platform can comprehensively secure your APIs, which is why some of the largest companies use APISec.