2021 ForgeRock Consumer Identity Breach Report

The year 2020 witnessed a massive digital migration. People did almost everything online – purchasing goods and services, consulting with healthcare professionals, arranging for meal deliveries, distance learning, and, of course, working from home.

Meanwhile, malicious actors did not skip a beat. This year’s report notably reveals that attacks involving usernames and passwords increased a staggering 450% over 2019, translating into more than 1 billion compromised records in the U.S. alone. With users spending more than double the amount of time online,1 their tendency to reuse common passwords continued to make this attack vector extremely attractive to cybercriminals.

Surprisingly, even with all this online activity, the number of mega-breaches decreased in 2020 and, correspondingly, so did the number of records compromised. However, the total number of breaches increased. Those involving less than 100 million records shot up by 50%. For smaller enterprises hoping to be ignored or biding their time in adopting Zero Trust security, 2020 shows us that they must
not wait. Cybercriminals are working their way into organizations of all sizes with the intent to seize valuable assets.

Read this report to find out how usernames and passwords found their way Into the crosshairs of attackers.