Hundreds of Millions of Global Company Data Leaked Throughout 2020

A Sonicwell report, from a company providing network security and data protection solutions, reveals that numerous global companies experienced data breaches throughout 2020. A number of well-known global corporations were listed among the victims of data breaches that year.

These corporate data breaches resulted in losses of hundreds of millions of US dollars. According to the Sonicwell report, Estée Lauder, an American skincare and cosmetics company, topped the list as the company with the most data compromised, with a total of 440 million data points.

Global technology companies were also not immune to hackers. Next on the list, 280 million Microsoft data points were leaked. Meanwhile, Facebook experienced a breach of 267 million data points.

Citing Sonicwell, the overall trend of cyberattacks increased in 2020. This includes encrypted threats, ransomware attacks, and Internet of Things (IoT) attacks. Only malware attacks decreased, by 43% compared to 2019.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic created opportunities for hackers to commit cybercrimes. They tended to exploit fear and confusion to trap people.

Healthcare and education were the industries with the highest malware threats during 2020. The peak occurred in September for the education industry and October for the healthcare industry.