The Largest Data Breaches in History

Looking back across history, it’s unimaginable to think of the things lost to time. Brilliant inventions, wonderful literature, beautiful poetry, much if not most is gone. There are large incidents in history, things like the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Although most cases of the complete destruction of history go undocumented.

Keeping this in mind, it’s still astounding to imagine that billions of files have been lost in data breaches. Billions that are documented and vital enough to be perceived as gone. From January to November of 2022 alone over 15 million records were breached. Nearly two thirds of those breaches occurred in the U.S, and that’s overall history.

Multiple states have more records breached than any other singular nation. California resting at the top of the pack with over five billion breached records. In history, these breaches tended to come as the cost of accidents or attacks. Fires, natural disasters, lost cities, whatever make information less valuable.

In a sense these continue today. Software malfunctions, weather events, these are common and relevant accidents. Attack wise malware is a massive risk, with countless methods existing to harvest information. Although neither of these stack up to simple accidents. Today's system is that of the masses.

Data today is logged and accessed by countless people. It only takes a few misclicks, accidents, or a general lack of experience to cause a breach. This moves simple mistakes into the most common cause for data breaches. Not malfunctions, not attacks, not hackers, simple and avoidable mistakes expose data.

For some industries this is less of an issue. A breach in the transportation industry is not just less common than most, it’s less relevant. Although a breach in finance is both extremely common and influential. Money runs the world, and breaches within that sphere are undoubtedly prioritized.

So what can any one person do with this information? Not much directly. The most important takeaways are that data is fundamentally changing. Not only is it digital, but it is moving rapidly into the realm of self-sufficiency. If human error is causing a majority of problems, stopping it is the solution.