According to a recent report by Canalys, data of over three-fourths of India’s adult population has been compromised since 2017.
Further, the report added that the digitalisation of electoral, tax and other government services was the issue in many of these cases. Many countries have rolled out ambitious digitalisation programs, such as Aadhaar, the Indian biometric identification system. But it is claimed that Aadhaar has already been compromised, risking the information of over 700 million people. These risks will continue to grow.
On the global scenario, the highlighted added that in last four years, at least 80 per cent of the adult population in Bulgaria, Chile, Ecuador, India, Panama, Philippines, Qatar and Turkey have been compromised in single but separate data breaches. Large proportions of populations in Brazil, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, the Netherlands, Serbia, Sweden and the US have also been affected in similar breaches over the last decade.
Further, commenting on digitisation amid Covid-19, it added that the rollout of contact-tracing apps and potential vaccine history passports in response to Covid-19 presents new potential attack vulnerabilities to compromise individuals’ personally identifiable information (PII), it added. Contact-tracing apps have been used as part of coordinated responses to contain infection rates and help re-open economies. But software vulnerabilities discovered in some rushed initiatives have raised concerns over the security of the personal data being collected. A vulnerability in Qatar’s Covid-19 app, for example, compromised more than a million national identification numbers and health status, said Canalys.
According to Canalys, 2020 has been the worst on record in terms of data breaches since 2005. In the last 15 years, at least 55 billion data records have been compromised in 900 known breaches, of which 77 per cent were compromised in the last two years. Canalys said that 26 billion records were compromised in just 5 known breaches, which equals seven billion records in seven mega-breaches during 2019. Three of the largest known breaches on record were identified in 2020.
Further, the report added that one of the most concerning aspects is that this is likely to be a limited view of the overall crisis in the industry. Even more concerning is that there is no sign of this slowing down, especially with the rapid shift to perimeter-less IT and the deployment of digital transformation projects.
