Cybersecurity Awareness Month isn’t over yet! Today, the ITRC released the ITRC 2024 Consumer & Business Impact Report!

Earlier today, the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) published the ITRC 2024 Consumer & Business Impact Report, supported by Experian. The report explores the trends from the three distinct groups – ITRC Victims, General Consumers, and Small Business Leaders – and how identity misuse, data breaches and cyberattacks impact them.

The 2024 Consumer & Business Impact Report findings highlight significant changes in cyber habits from consumers and small businesses. More consumers are freezing their credit, changing their password habits and adopting technologies like passkeys. Small businesses are implementing a range of data protection practices that will result in less personal data available to identity criminals.

For the report, the ITRC surveyed 254 ITRC Victims, 1,031 General Consumers and 461 small business owners or executives at a company of 500 or fewer employees to determine these trends. According to the responses, reports from General Consumers of identity crimes jumped 21 percentage points from July 2023 to June 2024. Nearly 47 percent of victims who contacted the ITRC during the reporting period had been victimized more than once. The number of first-time ITRC Victims increased to 45 percent from 36 percent. The number of first-time identity crime victims among General Consumers grew from 31 percent in 2023’s report to 37 percent in 2024.

Only 18 percent of General Consumer respondents did not receive a data breach notice in the last 12 months. Not only is the rate of data breach notices increasing, but so is the frequency, with more than 43 percent of victims receiving at least two notices, up from 29 percent in last year’s report.

Here’s some good news: The number of ITRC Victims who contemplated suicide dropped from the previous high of 16 percent to 12 percent in the most recent reporting period. And (unfortunately) some not so good news, the number of General Consumers who considered self-harm grew to five (5) percent, up from three (3) percent in 2023.

The 35-page ITRC 2024 Consumer & Business Impact Report is available for download here.

So, what do you think? Are you surprised that the numbers aren’t worse? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using GPT-4’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robots finding out their data has been breached”.

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