The information exposed by data breaches, even if it happened a year ago is still out there. This means that everyone is forever vulnerable.

These days, the risk and potential compromise of our personal information seems to be growing exponentially. Scammers, hackers, cybercriminals and identity thieves are constantly finding new ways to commit fraud.

Cybercrime is also the number one threat to companies around the world. Perhaps no incident is more notorious than the Equifax data breach of September 2017 which affected nearly 148 million people. Looking back one year and thousands of data breaches later, let's examine how business exposure has changed.

Financial & legal implications

The Equifax data breach shined a light on the magnitude in which personal information can be compromised through just one security incident. Granted, Equifax's compromise is more aligned with a mega breach, as approximately half of the U.S. adult population had their Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, driver's license numbers, email addresses, credit card numbers, and tax information stolen. Any combination of just two of these identifiers can be used to commit fraud, including synthetic identity theft, along with other criminal activities.