Prompt: Visit PrivacyRights.org to see the types of publicly available information about data breaches.  How might researchers use this information to study breaches?

One way researchers could use this information is to identify which industries cybercriminals are most interested in attacking. For instance, the data on this website shows that the medical industry has reported the greatest volume of data breaches since 2005. Additionally, all of the top 10 individual organizations that suffered the most breaches are financial institutions. Researchers might conclude that there needs to be more studies on the financial and medical industries to discover what led to these breaches and which changes these industries could implement to reduce the likelihood of future breaches. Furthermore, this data reveals a large percentage of data breaches where the fault or mechanism of action that caused the breaches is unknown. Researchers may conclude from this that more emphasis must be placed on discovering cybercriminals’ tactics and strategies to expose and steal data. Finally, researchers could use publicly available data about data breaches to better understand cybercrime trends. Because the data is historical, researchers may be able to predict which industries will be most targeted and how threat actors may carry out attacks.