The US is on track to break records for the most data breaches in a single year, outpacing the US’s record 1,862 compromise seen in 2021.

The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), a US-based nonprofit organisation aiming to support victims of identity crime, released its US data breach findings for the first half of 2023.

According to the H1 2023 Data Breach Report, there were 951 publicly reported data compromises in Q2, a 114% increase compared to the previous quarter, which saw 442 compromises.

Through the first half of 2023, the ITRC tracked 1,393 compromises, higher than the total compromises reported every year between 2005 and 2020, except for 2017.

According to the report, the number of victims in H1, amounting to 156,637,416 individuals, increased 153%, compared to the first half of 2022, which had 62,019,351 victims.

However, the report found that the number of victims disclosed in notices of a data breach is well behind 2022’s pace: notices in H1 2023 estimated that 156 million individuals were impacted by data breaches, compared with 424 million in the whole of 2022.

The number of data breaches with no actionable information about the root cause of the compromise grew to 534 in H1 2023 compared to 319 in H1 2022, a 67% increase.

“The second quarter and first half of 2023 has been historic with regard to data breaches,” said Eva Velasquez, President and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center.

“Since we started tracking data compromises in 2005, only the full years of 2017, 2021 and 2022 have exceeded the number of data events recorded in the first six months of 2023. While businesses and individuals may be numb to constant attacks and scams that lead to breaches, it’s important to remain diligent and practice good cyber-hygiene to make any information stolen or exposed less useful for identity criminals.”

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The issue of data compromise was felt across industry, as every sector reported a higher number of data compromises in H1 2023 compared to H1 2022.

Healthcare leads as the sector with the most compromises, followed by financial services, which reported nearly double the number of compromises versus H1 2022.

Phishing and ransomware were the primary attack vector for cyberattacks, and the number of malware attacks in 2023 increased 89% over the same period last year.

System and human error also contributed to the high number of data compromises, leading to 311 breaches.