Recent cybersecurity study reveals top US states to suffer data breaches

A recent study by Network Secured offers insights into cybersecurity risks and data breach exposure suffered by US states by comparing data breach statistics from federal and state agencies alongside data gathered from non-profit privacy and identity theft reporting organizations.

Although the independent advisory firm calls attention to a lack of accurate reporting of data breaches within the US, its analysis reveals some interesting points regarding the top five US states for data breaches.

This includes California with 1,338 all-time reported data breaches, New York with 618, Texas with 581, Florida with 458 and Maryland with 343.

“Accurate reporting on data breaches is notoriously hard to come by. U.S. states and companies are largely not transparent about data breach information”, the company explained. “Some states don’t even require reporting until more than 10,000 people are impacted.”

It’s no surprise that California holds the #1 spot on the data breach reporting list, as the study shows “there are more data breaches in states where there are more companies.”

Nevertheless, the state of California is also home to three of the worst 10 data breaches of 2022, including two linked to Twitter and the third to the Neopets data breach.

While New York reports less than half the number of data breaches of California, the study shows that a lack of public data breach records deters security research.

Interestingly, the third worst state for data breaches, Texas, also has the highest state government budget for cybersecurity, at a whopping $800 million, and a distinguished data breach reporting system, as of 2021.

Even though Florida holds the #4 spot on the data breach naughty list, the state has more than four times more healthcare data breaches per 1,000 registered healthcare organizations than any other state.

With a cybersecurity investment budget of $200 million, the study notes that, as of 2022, the state reported 16 HIPAA breaches.

US organizations are a gold mine for cyberattackers hunting consumer and company data to conduct a variety of crimes.

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