The number of data breaches reported and records exposed both increased by more than 50 percent during the first half of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018.

The 2019 MidYear QuickView Data Breach Report by Risk Based Security found that there were 3,816 data breaches during the first six months of the year, up 54 percent, resulting in 4.1 billion records being compromised, up 52 percent. Although 3.2 billion of those records were part of just eight breaches and all were attributable to malicious actors discovering misconfigured databases.

The report only tracked publicly disclosed breaches.

“Looking over the first six months of 2019, it is hard to be optimistic on the outlook for the year. The number of breaches is up and the number of records exposed remains stubbornly high. Despite best efforts and awareness among business leaders and defenders, data breaches continue to take place at an alarming rate,” said Inga Goddijn, Executive Vice President of Risk Based Security.

The healthcare sector suffered 224 breaches, retail 199, finance and insurance 183, government and information 160 each and education 99.

Goddijn said the type of data being sought has also changed with email addresses and passwords being the most sought, or at least the most stolen. Email addresses were exposed in 70 percent of the incidents, followed by passwords, 64 percent; name, 23 percent; Social Security number, 11 percent; and credit card number, 11 percent.

Regionally the report did not offer much detail, but it noted that 1,132 of the breaches took place in the United States, 353 were non-U.S. but a location was not given and in 2,449 cases the nation was not known.