1 in 5 Indians is Prone to Data Breaches

India remains synonymous with data breaches. Recently, cybersecurity's data monitoring firm Surfshark revealed that 1 out of 5 Indians had been affected by data breaches (19 for every 100 people) from 2004 to Q4 FY22. India is the fourth country to have the highest number of data point leaks. The study revealed that 738k Indian accounts have been breached till now.

Last month, the internal systems of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) succumbed to one of the worst ransomware attacks. The institute has now switched many of its operations from digital to manual. Even the ICMR website faced about 6,000 hacking attempts. 

The below video highlights the implications of such breaches: 

Recently, India's government platform for connecting with its overseas population, Global Pravasi Rishta Portal, leaked sensitive information like names, phones, passport numbers and email addresses. The list goes on and on. 

Since 2004, India has had over one billion data leaks, with an average of 4 data leaks per hacked account. Since 2004, 51.8 billion data points—of which 15.5 billion were email addresses—have been exposed. Each email address is exposed to 2.3 extra data points on average.

Since the beginning of 2020, 2.5 billion accounts have been affected, accounting for 16.2% of all worldwide breaches that have occurred since 2004. Every year, 11 out of 100 people worldwide are affected. Breach rates, however, have decreased since the fourth quarter of 2020. As a result, the number of Indian data breaches decreased from 13,688,077 to 738,361.

One of India's most leaked data points is passwords. Statistically, since 2004, for every ten Indian online accounts, five passwords have been leaked. India ranks second in Asia and sixth globally based on the breach count since 2004 (265.4M compromised internet users). Accounts from Vietnam, Iraq, and America have been compromised with the most data points. 

Two nations account for 30.4% of all global breaches: the US and Russia.

The majority of hacked accounts worldwide are located in the United States. It represents 15.9% of all compromised email addresses worldwide. Russian email accounts make up 14.5% of all global breaches. The country with the most exposed accounts per 100 people is Russia. According to statistics, each Russian account's email address was breached about 15 times. This figure is 7.8 times greater than the global average (199 breached accounts per 100 people).