Consumer Identity Breaches Up 450% in 2020: ForgeRock

Consumer identity breaches surged an “unprecedented” 450% last year from 2019, reported ForgeRock Monday. The digital identity platform evaluated electronic data breaches in Australia, Germany, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S., finding unauthorized access was the leading cause for the third straight year, rising 43% from 2019. “Questionable yet common security practices, like sharing or reusing passwords, gave bad actors an easy path to gaining access to personally identifiable information,” such as dates of birth and Social Security numbers, which ForgeRock found recurring in a third of 2020 breaches. Phishing (25%) and ransomware (17%) were the second and third most frequent causes. Healthcare was the most targeted industry for a second straight year, but tech “paid the highest aggregate cost of recovery from breaches at $288 billion,” it said.