According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), 1,244 data breaches were reported in 2018 that endangered more than 446 million records containing the personally identifiable information of the consumer (PII). The keyword in the last sentence is & # 39; reported & # 39 ;. Assuming that every hacked company reports a violation as they should, we can look at 1,244 violations as the number of times a hacker has been caught …. and believe me, hackers don't like being caught.
This means that the 1,244 reported violations are only the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of extra companies are being violated every day, but just don't know it. Often the company is small and does not have a full-time network security manager or the number of payment cards that they uncover on a daily basis is not large enough to be marked by bank networks and infringed by investigators.
Although every minor, unreported violation can only have a few hundred cards, the total number of cards that can be shot can be quite large.
The dark economy
I invited Stephen W. Orfei, former Managing Director of the PCI Security Standards Council, to speak at a recent Bluefin Summit. His presentation shed light on the dark economy, how it reflects the real economy and how it is proliferating. He quoted a direct quote from Dr. Al's alarming study. Michael McGuire in the Web of Profit: the growth of cyber crime:
