MOSCOW, January 28. /TASS/. The number of reported users’ data leaks increased by 40% in Russia in 2019, President of InfoWatch Group, head of the cybersecurity workgroup within the ‘Digital economy’ National Project Natalya Kasperskaya said in an interview with TASS.
"In 2019, the number of leaks increased by more than 40% in Russia, whereas worldwide the number of such cases rose by around 10%. The number of compromised records of personal data and payment information in Russia rose almost six-fold to 170 mln, whereas globally that indicator doubled to 14 bln records," she said.
In 2019, the share of deliberate violations increased in the world, with around two thirds of leaks being deliberate, according to the data provided by InfoWatch, Kasperskaya said. Meanwhile, the bulk of leaks recorded last year (over 50%) occurred due to the fault of hackers. In Russia, even though it increased, the share of leaks caused by hackers still amounts to less than 20%, while around 70% of violators are rank-and-file employees, she added.
"Looking at last year’s leaks statistics, one may think that Russia is a special country as the leaks picture is so different from the global one, though in reality everything is a great deal simpler. The main share of global leaks is made public in Anglo-Saxon countries, for example, the US, Britain, Canada have specialized laws obliging companies to publish the leakage cases. <…> No one clearly wants to announce publicly: "We did not pay attention to cybersecurity," which is why companies that let the leakage, invent external threats as a reason of the leakage. Consequently, external violators take a bigger share in western publications than in Russia, while the Russian companies do not face the pressure of required publications, which is why the statistics of Russian published leaks seriously differs from the global one," she explained.