To the certainties of life that are death and taxes, add data breaches. And the ways that bad guys take our digital stuff are constantly changing: Companies have gotten smarter about how they secure information, but hacking and phishing are rising—fast. “It’s easier to fool people than technology,” says Adam Levin, founder of Cyberscout, which has been analyzing US data breaches for more than a decade. “No system is more secure than the weakest link, and the weakest link is always people.”
Based on data from CyberScout and the Identity Theft Resource Center, we created a series of contour lines showing how frequently companies, hospitals, government agencies, and other organizations were compromised by various methods over time. Areas with shallow slopes mean things are hovering around the status quo. Color bands that are close together mean the type of attack is quickly getting more (or less) frequent. So, don’t be the weakest link: Enable two-factor authentication, use a password manager, and never, ever click on that random attachment.
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