Digital security company, Gemalto, has found that identity theft accounts for 53% of global data breaches while state-sponsored attacks account for 41% of stolen data records.

The findings of the Breach Level Index (BLI) for the first six months of 2015 show that 888 data breaches occurred in the period resulting in 246 million compromised records worldwide.

According to Gemalto's BLI report there has been a 41% decline in the number of compromised data records during the first six months of this year, compared to the first half of 2014.

The decline in compromised records, the report moots, can most likely be attributed to that fact that fewer large scale mega breaches have occurred in the retail industry compared to the same period last year.

Jason Hart, vice president and chief technology officer for Data Protection at Gemalto said hackers are seeing increasing benefits from the more advanced attacks that they've mounted.

"What we're continuing to see is a large ROI (return on investment) for hackers with sophisticated attacks that expose massive amounts data records. Cyber criminals are still getting away with big and very valuable data sets. For instance, the average healthcare data breach in the first half of 2015 netted more than 450,000 data records, which is an increase of 200 percent compared to the same time last year."

Data breaches by source and type

The number of state-sponsored attacks accounted for just 2% of data breach incidents according to the report, but the number of records compromised as a result of those attacks totalled 41% of all records exposed, due to the breaches at Anthem Insurance and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

While none of the top 10 breaches from first half of 2014 were caused by state-sponsored attacks, three of the top ten this year were state sponsored.

Identity theft remains the primary type of breach and it accounts for 75% of all records compromised and slightly more than half (53%) of data breaches in the first half of 2015. Five of the top ten breaches, including the top three – which were all classified as Catastrophic on the BLI – were identity theft breaches, down from seven of the top 10 from the same period last year.

African reflections on cyber security

Attendees at last week's Africa Information & Communication Technologies Alliance (AfICTA) Summit in Johannesburg reflected on some of the cybersecurity challenges that face the continent.

Ivorian chief executive officer and founder of Diamond Security Consulting, Laïcana Coulibaly told delegates at the three day summit that the key to stemming the cybersecurity threat was in collaboration.

"Crackers and hackers are clever people and I don't know how it happens in other countries in Africa, but in my country when we see a hacker or cracker the first thing we think is to put these persons to jail directly. It is a big mistake, these people are able to do a lot of things, they are clever. We have to think of something else, they can help government and people to defend the cyberspace because they know how to hack they must know how to defend.We have to see of how we can work with them, how we can educate them."

Delegates also called for continental and worldwide legislative uniformity as a way to ensure a safer internet. Hossam ElGammal, chief executive officer of Egyptian e-security company GNSE Group cited this as one of the ways to tackle the cyber security challenge.

"We need a common cyber security document for all African countries. It will also be a good idea to have awareness sessions from governments who already have cyber security legislation to others who don't. We can have this from Egypt, Nigeria as well as others."