Nigeria ranks 32nd most data breached country with 82 thousand leaked accounts in Q1’2023

By Onome Amuge 

Nigeria recorded 82 thousand leaked accounts in the first quarter of 2023, 64 per cent  higher compared to 50 thousand leaks reported in Q4’2022, to emerge 32nd position on the list of countries with the highest number of  breached  data in the reviewed period, according to a global study report conducted by  Surfshark.

The cybersecurity firm also found that globally, a total of 41.6 million accounts were breached in Q1’2023, with Russia ranking first and amounting to a sixth of all breaches from January through March. The United States was ranked second place, while Taiwan emerged  third most breached country after extreme quarter-over-quarter growth, followed by France and Spain.

A data breach, according to industry experts, is any security incident in which unauthorised parties gain access to sensitive data or confidential information, including personal or corporate data.

Surfshark’s study found that data breaches declined globally in Q1’ 2023, with a 49 per cent decrease in breached users worldwide compared to nearly 81 million reported in  Q4’2022.This, the report noted ,represented one user account being leaked every second in the first three months of the year..

However, some countries including Taiwan, Saudi Arabia,South Korea,Czechia and Armenia experienced rapid growth, jumping 21 times,19 times,13 times,nine times and seven times, respectively.

On a regional basis, the study found that Europe was the most affected region by breaches in Q1’2023, followed by Asia and North America. On the other hand,  all other regions comprised less than five per cent of the quarter’s total.

“In Q1’2023, Europe was also the only region with a significant quarter-over-quarter increase in its statistics on data breaches. The number nearly doubled, growing from 9.9M in Q4’2022 to 17.5M in Q1’2023. To put this into perspective, 2 out of 5 accounts breached in Q1’2023 were of European origin, with 38% of these being Russian. Within the region, the biggest quarter-over-quarter spikes in data breaches were recorded in Czechia (almost 9x), Armenia (around 6x), and Switzerland (6x),” the report said.

Asia was ranked the second-most vulnerable region, accounting for around a fourth of the quarter’s 10.6 million breaches. The report showed that three countries that saw the highest quarter-over-quarter increase overall were all Asian. This is as Taiwan and Saudi Arabia both had around 20 times more leaked accounts in Q1’2023 than in Q4’2022, while South Korea saw its number increase 12 times.

Surfshark further noted that an additional 13 per cent of leaked accounts were North American, with an estimated total of 5.3 million breaches. All other regions comprised less than five per cent of the quarter’s total. Out of all regions, Africa saw the greatest quarter-over-quarter decrease, as data breaches reduced 33 times, bringing its total of 18.6 million leaked accounts in Q4’2022 down to 557.6 thousand in Q1’2023.

Meanwhile, some of the biggest breaches by email count were Sberbank (Russia), with 2.9 million  accounts leaked, Weee! (United States) with 1.1 million, and Zurich Insurance (Switzerland) with 756.7 thousand leaks.

Commenting on the report, Agneska Sablovskaja, lead researcher at Surfshark, said that despite the global decrease in breached data,the fact that over 40 million accounts were breached in just a few months is still a cause for concern.

Sablovskaja warned that those whose data was compromised are at an increased risk of being targeted by cybercriminals as their personal information can be utilised for phishing attacks, fraud, identity theft, and other serious cybercrimes.

According to Surfshark,the data was collected by its independent partners from 29,000 publicly available databases and aggregated by email address.

“To determine the location of the email address, our partners’ mechanism looked into several associated parameters, such as domain names, IP addresses, locales, coordinates, currency or phone numbers. This data was then anonymized and passed on to Surfshark’s researchers to perform a statistical analysis of their findings,” it explained.