Apple is emphasizing the importance of data encryption with a report that shows personal data breaches up 300 percent between 2013 and 2022. In the past two years, more than 2.6 billion personal records have been exposed, according to the newly released study “The Continued Threat to Personal Data: Key Factors Behind the 2023 Increase.” The report, created by Dr. Stuart Madnick, the founding director of Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan, cites increasing dependence on cloud computing as the main factor for the surge. U.S. data intrusions through Q3 of this year are 20 percent higher than all 12 months of 2022.

Not surprisingly, Apple is presenting the findings in support of its Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, which debuted last year. Apple says the study was independently conducted by Dr. Madnick as a follow-up to last year’s report, “The Rising Threat to Consumer Data in the Cloud.”

“Bad actors continue to pour enormous amounts of time and resources into finding more creative and effective ways to steal consumer data, and we won’t rest in our efforts to stop them,” Apple Senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said in an Apple Newsroom post. “As threats to consumer data grow, we’ll keep finding ways to fight back.”

“It’s almost as though the best way to ensure your online data is safe is to make sure no one stores any of it,” writes Computerworld, calling the issue “a global epidemic.”

The main takeaway is that vigilant protection is required, and “should be mandatory” on a corporate level, Computerworld says, explaining that “end-to-end encryption is all the more important when criminals and dodgy government-backed spies are attempting to break into the servers your data sits on.”

Key takeaways highlighted by Axios include the fact that U.S. residents “and those in the UK topped the list of those most targeted in ransomware attacks in 2023, followed by Canada and Australia,” with those four countries accounting for almost 70 percent of all reported attacks. Also, that “one in four people in the U.S. had their health data exposed in a data breach during the first nine months of 2023.”

Ransomware attacks have increased in recent years, as has their sophistication. (Computerworld writes that some even have “help desks” to assist victims in handing over their cash and getting files restored.)

As businesses become more globally entwined, as does personal data, exposure also increases, to the point where one little breach can have big repercussions, Apple says. If one’s own server can’t do a cold read on the data (which is the point of encryption), that also diminishes the odds a hacker can.

Related:
Apple Shutters Third-Party Apps that Enabled iMessage on Android, Bloomberg, 12/9/23
Apple Security Update Fixes Zero-Day Webkit Exploits, TechRepublic, 12/1/23