Infographic: Is Security Spending Proportional to the Data Breach Problem?

Nate Lord
Last Updated: Thursday July 27, 2017

Einstein famously defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." So why do companies continue to follow the same archaic security strategies while data breaches are at an all-time high?

We decided to take a closer look at this issue and did some research to compare data breach trends with security technology spending. What did we find? Companies continue to invest heavily in network and device security while allocating just 1% of their security budgets toward protecting cyber criminals' top target: data. In fact, a recent Impact Report from 451 Research sums this point up nicely:

"… it's better to focus scarce resources on securing the data itself rather than spending ever-higher sums erecting tighter boundaries around it. The logic is sound: despite the billions of dollars spent each year on perimeter and endpoint security, the bad guys keep finding new ways in, and the data breach parade rolls on without a hiccup."

This interactive infographic shows security spending and data breach trends over the past five years - click an orb to launch a whole year's worth of threats and get a breakdown of how companies invested in security as well as the top breaches and threats for that year.

Click to View Fullscreen

Number of Data Breaches Per Year

Year	Number of Data Breaches
2010	761
2011	855
2012	621
2013	1367
2014	2122

Source: Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 2011-2015

Number of Records Exposed by Data Breaches, Per Year

Year	Number of Records Exposed
2010	3.8 million
2011	174 million
2012	44 million
2013	822 million
2014	700 million

Source: Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 2011-2015; 2013 total from RBS

Top Threat Actions by Year

Year	Threat Actions
2010	Physical Tampering, Spyware, Data-exporting Malware
2011	Brute Force, Spyware, Use of Stolen Credentials
2012	Spyware, Backdoor Exploitation, Use of Stolen Credentials
2013	Use of Stolen Credentials, Data-exporting Malware, Phishing
2014	Use of Stolen Credentials, RAM-scaping Malware, Spyware

Source: Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 2011-2015

Top 5 Data Breaches by Year, By Records Exposed

Year	Data Breach and Number of Records Exposed
2010	ECMC: 3.3 million records JP Morgan Chase: 2.6 million records Betfair: 2.3 million records NYC Health & Hospitals Corp: 1.7 million records Gawker.com: 1.5 million records
2011	Sony Playstation Network: 77 million records Steam: 35 million records Tianya: 28 million records Sony Online Entertainment: 24.6 million records Nexon Korea Corporation: 13.2 million records
2012	Court Ventures: 200 million records Zappos: 24 million records Blizzard: 14 million records Apple: 12.4 million records Greek Government: 9 million records
2013	Target: 70 million records Evernote: 50 million records Living Social: 50 million records Adobe: 36 million records Yahoo Japan: 22 million records
2014	Sony: 100 terabytes eBay: 145 million records JPMC: 76 million records Home Depot: 56 million records Korea Credit Bureau: 27 million records

Source: Information is Beautiful

Annual Security Technology Spending Breakdown

Year	Security Spending by Technology Layer
2010	Network Security: $16,190,720,000 (43%) Database Security: $7,153,400,000 (19%) Application Security: $5,059,600,000 (14%) Endpoint Security/Antivirus: $5,059,600,000 (14%) Identity Management: $3,541,720,000 (9%) Data Protection: $436,000,000 (1%) Total Annual Security Technology Spend: $37,441,040,000
2011	Network Security: $17,222,400,000 (39%) Database Security: $9,301,360,000 (21%) Application Security: $6,314,880,000 (14%) Endpoint Security/Antivirus: $6,314,880,000 (14%) Identity Management: $4,592,640,000 (10%) Data Protection: $458,000,000 (1%) Total Annual Security Technology Spend: $44,204,160,000
2012	Network Security: $19,667,200,000 (43%) Database Security: $9,352,600,000 (20%) Application Security: $6,760,600,000 (15%) Endpoint Security/Antivirus: $6,146,000,000 (13%) Identity Management: $3,687,600,000 (8%) Data Protection: $481,000,000 (1%) Total Annual Security Technology Spend: $46,095,000,000
2013	Network Security: $19,771,800,000 (39%) Database Security: $10,649,020,000 (21%) Application Security: $7,908,720,000 (16%) Endpoint Security/Antivirus: 5,931,540,000 (12%) Identity Management: $5,272,480,000 (11%) Data Protection: $555,000,000 (1%) Total Annual Security Technology Spend: $50,088,560,000
2014	Network Security: $20,631,180,000 (37%) Database Security: $8,587,460,000 (15%) Application Security: $8,537,040,000 (15%) Endpoint Security/Antivirus: $9,959,880,000 (18%) Identity Management: $7,114,200,000 (13%) Data Protection: $661,000,000 (1%) Total Annual Security Technology Spend: $55,490,760,000

Sources:
Total Annual Security Spending Figures from Gartner Forecast: Information Security, Worldwide, 2010-2018
By-Layer Security Spending Percentages from Forrester Research, Content Security Predictions: 2011 and Beyond, Content Security: 2012 Budget and Planning Guide, Understand The State Of Network Security: 2012 To 2013, Understand The State Of Data Security And Privacy: 2013 To 2014, Understand The State Of Data Security And Privacy: 2014 To 2015

Nate Lord

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Nate Lord

Nate Lord is the former editor of Data Insider and is currently an account manager covering the southeast, Great Lakes, and Latin America regions at Digital Guardian. He has over 7 years of experience in the information security industry, working at Veracode prior to joining Digital Guardian in 2014. Nate enjoys learning about the complex problems facing information security professionals and collaborating with Digital Guardian customers to help solve them.

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