In 2022, Australians experienced harsh data breaches by major companies like Medibank and Optus. 

“Every second of 2022, 10 internet users have lost their data ” says lead researcher at Surfshark, Agneska Sablovskaja.

Research by Surfshark has outlined the countries that suffered the most data breaches, with Australia in ninth place. The top five countries that were involved in the most significant data leaks in 2022 were Russia, China, United States, France and Indonesia. The report stated Russia had the highest breach density, affecting 718 accounts leaked per thousand people. 

The Medibank breach affected more than half of all Australian email accounts that were leaked. But, Australia’s situation has improved by 65 percent compared to 2021 results. Globally, the report indicated that a total of 310.9 million accounts were breached in 2022, as opposed to the 959 million accounts in 2021. 

“While these numbers remain unsettling, we’re happy to report an immense global decrease of 68% compared to last year.” 

“Some countries, including U.S., India and Brazil, managed to improve their situation, while Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Russia experienced the biggest surges in data breaches year-over-year,” Sablovskaja says.

Australia was ranked 15th in 2021, but experienced the most severe data breaches in Australian history in 2022. Healthcare provider Medibank lost 2.1 million email accounts, with 1.8 million of those being Australian origin. Furniture giant, Amart, was also among the biggest in 2022 for Australia, 103,000 accounts were leaked with warranty details. 

Russia was the most breached country

On a worldwide scale, European accounts made up half of the total breaches in 2022, with nearly 70 percent of them being leaked were Russian accounts. Up until 2021, the United States remained the single most breach country until the invasion of Ukraine. 

A third of all accounts in Russia were leaked with the courier service CDEK and news portal NGS.ru exposing 19 million Russian accounts each. Following this, the third-largest Russian breach was of Gemotest, a medical laboratory network, which exposed another 6 million Russian users.