Gemalto ; the world leader in digital security, today released the findings of the Breach Level Index for the first six months of 2015, revealing that 888 data breaches occurred, compromising 246 million records worldwide.

In a statement distributed by African Press Organisation, it was revealed that data breaches had increased by 10% compared to the first half of 2014.

This decline in compromised records 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.

Large data breaches continued to expose massive amounts of personal information and identities according to the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Data Protection at Gemalto, Jason Hart.

“What we’re continuing to see is a large ROI 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,” said Jason Hart.

The largest breach in the first half of 2015 was an identity theft attack on Anthem Insurance that exposed 78.8 million records, representing almost a third (32%) of the total data records stolen in the first six months of 2015.

Other notable breaches during this analysis period included a 21-million-record breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (BLI: 9.7); a 50-million-record breach at Turkey’s General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs (BLI: 9.3); and a 20-million-record breach at Russia’s Topface (BLI: 9.2). In fact, the top 10 breaches accounted for 81.4% of all compromised records.

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, thereby accounting for 2% of data breach incidents.

Identity theft remained the primary type of breach, accounting for 75% of all records compromised and slightly more than half (53%) of data breaches in the first half of 2015.