WORLDTECHNearly seven in ten Kroll breach victims were exposed through outside suppliers
According to Help Net Security, almost seven in ten people hit by data breaches handled by Kroll were affected through an outside supplier, as the firm's Data Breach Outlook 2026 reports. Many of those affected say they had never heard of the company that held their information.
Outside suppliers sit behind most exposures
Kroll's Data Breach Outlook 2026 indicates that most individuals in the breaches it handled were affected because of a third party rather than through the organisation they dealt with directly, Help Net Security reports.
The same report notes that the share differs by industry, with the sector-by-sector breakdown contained in the underlying data.
How one provider's failure reaches many
Businesses increasingly hand storage, transaction processing and software operations to outside providers. When one of those providers suffers a breach, customer records it keeps for several organisations can be exposed together.
That structure helps explain why people may learn of a leak from a company they never chose to deal with, because their data sat with a supplier serving businesses they may never have encountered.
Open questions
- How many individuals were affected in total across the breaches Kroll reviewed?
- Which industries show the highest share of third-party exposures?