Where did the breach go? Quick comparison with NY Times API, Google News, and DataLossDB data

[David Shettler <dave () opensecurityfoundation org>]

Where on earth did the breach go? We've asked ourselves, we've asked
others, and we've been asked by many.

The simple answer is, we don't know! It could be anything, really,
that has caused the dramatic decline in reported data loss incidents
in 2009. Here are a few ideas:

     The decline is media related. Data breaches are 'passé'.
      Organizations are implementing better security.
      Organizations aren't reporting incidents.
      Solar Flares

None of these, with the exception of solar flares, is likely to be
analyzable at first glance. But what about the first bullet?

Due to a lack in expertise of space weather, we decided to dive into
the Google News archives, and things became interesting. Google News'
timeline feature facilitates this kind of analysis. We looked through
search result totals matching the query "data breach", per month, for
72 months (2004 through 2009). We then tossed the data into a graph,
added a polynomial trend-line with an order of 6, and took a deep
breath.

[...read on via link below]

http://datalossdb.org/where_did_it_go
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