Companies, employees and consumers are under more pressure than ever to remain increasingly vigilant to social engineering attacks, phishing scams, malware and fraud.

Recent data from Risk Based Security revealed that the number of records exposed has increased to a staggering 36 billion in 2020. There were 2,935 publicly reported breaches in the first three quarters of 2020, with the three months of Q3 adding an additional 8.3 billion records to what was already the “worst year on record.” Here, we bring you our list of the top 10 data breaches of 2020.

Ransomware penetrates an organization’s IT infrastructure through phishing emails or endpoint vulnerabilities and then encrypts files, holding data hostage until a fee is paid to decrypt them. The FBI has deemed ransomware the fastest growing malware threat, causing significant revenue loss, business downtime and reputational damage. It’s critical organizations protect their data by following the best practices.

On November 4, 2020, the YES on Prop 24 campaign announced the passage of the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), with a majority of Californians supporting the measure to strengthen consumer privacy rights. The new law aims to give Californians the strongest online privacy rights in the world. But, does the CPRA do enough to advance the data privacy of California consumers? Many security and privacy leaders argue that it does not. To find out more, we talk to David Bodnick, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Startpage, a private search engine.