In the first six months of 2018, almost one billion records were compromised in Aadhaar breach incident, including name, address and other personally identified information, according to a new report by digital security firm Gemalto.

According to company's Breach Level Index, almost one billion data records have been exposed in India since 2013, when the index began benchmarking publicly disclosed data breaches.

"During the first six months of 2018, almost 1 billion records were compromised in Aadhaar breach incident, including name, address and other personally identified information. This is particularly concerning, since the stolen, lost or compromised data records of only one out of 12 breaches were protected by encryption to render the information useless," Gemalto said.

The index is a global database of public data breaches, revealing 945 data breaches led to 4.5 billion data records being compromised worldwide in the first half of 2018. Compared to the same period in 2017, the number of lost, stolen or compromised records increased by a staggering 133 percent, though the total number of breaches slightly decreased over the same period, signalling an increase in the severity of each incident.