In so many ways 2020 has become the year of change. Practically every aspect of daily life has been touched by the pandemic, from how we do our work to what we do with our free time. Our data breach research is no exception.

Followers of our research are already aware that breach reporting has taken something of a hit this year. Turbulent times have dominated the news cycle, taking a bite out of the breadth of media attention available to report on data exposure events, while at the same time resources remain stretched at the public service offices that provide information on breach activity. We’ve said this before but it bears repeating: it is our belief that data breach activity remains relatively unchanged. Instead, it is the information reported about these events that has slowed.

Like so many others, the Cyber Risk Analytics research team is adapting to the change and focusing our efforts on the data most relevant to our customers. That means we’re adjusting our priorities, spending more time on new data sources and shifting attention away from less productive ones. One such example is turning our attention to monitoring the many ransomware operator sites that have cropped up this year. We are also in the process of expanding our schema by enriching our incident data with additional impact information. We’re looking forward to sharing this research with you in future reports.

For now, this report examines publicly disclosed data breach events first reported between January 1, 2020 and September 30, 2020. As always, it is our sincere hope that you find this report valuable and enjoy reading it as much as we enjoy bringing it to you.