2024 has been marred by some of the largest data breaches in recent history, affecting millions of individuals and leading to over 1 billion stolen records. These security incidents not only jeopardize personal information but also empower cybercriminals to carry out malicious activities.
Let’s delve into some of the major data breaches of 2024, examining their impact and exploring how these breaches could have been prevented.
AT&T’s Data Breaches
AT&T faced two significant data breaches in 2024, both resulting in the exposure of sensitive customer information. In one instance, hackers obtained phone numbers and call records of nearly all AT&T customers, while another breach involved the leak of personal information of millions of customers, including encrypted passcodes.
Change Healthcare Breach
Change Healthcare, a health tech giant, fell victim to a ransomware attack that compromised a substantial amount of medical data on individuals in the United States. The breach, attributed to inadequate security measures, resulted in widespread disruptions across healthcare facilities.
Synnovis Cyberattack
Synnovis, a pathology lab in the UK, experienced a ransomware attack that led to significant outages and data theft affecting millions of patient interactions and records. The incident underscored the vulnerability of healthcare systems to cyber threats.
Ticketmaster’s Data Breach
A series of data thefts from Snowflake resulted in one of the largest breaches of the year, with cybercriminals stealing hundreds of millions of customer records from various organizations. Snowflake’s lax security measures allowed unauthorized access to sensitive data, impacting numerous companies and customers.
(Dis)honorable Mentions
Cencora Data Breach: U.S. pharma company Cencora suffered a breach involving patients’ health data, affecting over a million individuals.
MediSecure Ransomware Attack: Hackers targeted MediSecure, compromising personal and health data of half of Australia’s population.
Kaiser Data Sharing Incident: Kaiser inadvertently shared private health information of 13.4 million patients with tech companies, raising concerns about privacy breaches in the healthcare sector.
USPS Privacy Concerns: The U.S. Postal Service was found sharing postal addresses of users with tech giants, highlighting privacy lapses in data handling practices.
Evolve Bank Cyberattack: Fintech-focused Evolve Bank experienced a ransomware attack leading to the theft of personal information of 7.6 million individuals, impacting both customers and organizations.
