There have been 3,676 publicly disclosed data compromise events through September 30. Breach activity continues at a consistent pace for 2018, which although significant in level, will likely not reach the numbers we saw in 2017, according to the 2018 Q3 Data Breach QuickView report by Risk Based Security.

“The number of reported breaches shows some improvement compared to 2017 and the number of records exposed has dropped dramatically,” said Inga Goddijn, Executive Vice President for Risk Based Security. “However, an improvement from 2017 is only part of the story, since 2018 is on track to have the second most reported breaches and the third most records exposed since 2005. Despite the decrease from 2017, the overall trend continues to be more breaches and more mega breaches impacting tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of records at once.”