Facebook tops the data loss roll of shame

Data breaches have almost become a fact of everyday life, but there are still some that have greater impact than others.

Software company Intact has carried out an analysis of publicly available data to see which companies have suffered the most large-scale data breaches (involving more than 30,000 records or more) over the last 16 years.

Facebook tops the list with both the most breaches and the greatest number of records lost. The social network suffered five breaches and 864,500,000 lost records over the period covered.

The top five is completed by:

2 Marriott International losing 505,200,000 records
3 MongoDB, 477,000,000
4 AOL, 92,000,000
5 JP Morgan Chase, 78,600,000

The worst year for large-scale breaches was 2011, followed by 2013 and 2019, while the most common reasons for breaches were hacking, poor security, and lost/stolen media.

You can find out more on the Intact blog and there's an infographic of the most hacked companies and most breached sectors below.

Image credit: In Green / Shutterstock