Malaysia has had its fair share of data breaches, be it due to attacks or negligence. Making bad news worse is that this has happened frequently enough that Malaysia is placed at number 11 in a list of most breached countries in the world for the second quarter of 2022. This is according to cybersecurity company and VPN provider Surfshark.
Looking at millions of breached accounts between the months of April and June this year, Surfshark claims that more than 665200 Malaysian accounts have been breached, which is a growth of 733% over the last quarter. This data is gleamed from 27000 leaked databases.
Agneska Sablovskaja, a data researcher with Surfshark, says that 64% of people in Southeast Asia have been affected by data breaches. But for Malaysia specifically, this goes up to 138%, accounting for multiple accounts per email address. Sablovskaja adds that “Statistically speaking, an average Malaysian has been affected by data breaches at least one time”.
This is unfortunately a trend that’s consistent with the rest of East Asia, according to Surfshark. The number of breached users in Japan has gone up by 1442% over the last quarter, with a total of 1.3 million breached users. China and South Korea also saw massive increases in number of breached users over the last quarter, going up by 1092% and 1013%, respectively.
You can check out the global data breach map and stats that Surfshark has compiled by visiting its Data Breach World Map, linked below. The page tracks the total number of breached accounts since 2004, which adds up to a grand total of over 15 million. For Malaysia specifically, as of Q2 2022, a total of 44.2 million accounts have been breached. This number has only grown to 44.7 million since 1 July. The company also notes that 31.4% of these breached accounts don’t identify the owner’s country or residence. This means that the country-specific numbers are actually higher than what is shown.
(Source: Surfshark)
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