Data Breaches Are Getting Bigger and Companies Are Telling Us Less

The next time a company tells you it suffered a “cybersecurity incident,” don’t expect much of an explanation.

The Identity Theft Resource Center tracked 1,803 publicly reported data compromises during the first half of 2026, according to its new data breach report. Those incidents generated an estimated 471.2 million victim notices, more than double the revised total from the same period last year, and 58% more than were issued during all of 2025.

Victim notices are issued to people whose information was exposed or potentially exposed. They aren’t a count of unique individuals, though — someone caught up in multiple breaches can be counted more than once.

That jump was driven by the return of megabreaches, led by an attack involving the Canvas education platform that accounted for more than half of this year’s victim notices.

Meanwhile, companies are revealing less about how these attacks happen. Only...

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