Manila, Philippines – The Philippines has been ranked ninth in the Asia-Pacific region with the most breaches, accounting for around 1.2 million users affected, according to the latest study from cybersecurity company Surfshark.

According to the report, the new statistic was 70.2% less than the previous year. It is estimated that 11 in 1,000 people in the Philippines are affected by a data breach.

On a regional level, Asia amounted to a fourth of all world’s breaches with 74.2M, mostly coming from China, Indonesia and India. Turkey ended up in the 4th place regionally, followed by Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Malaysia. 

In APAC, the IndiHome breach was the biggest in the region in 2022, leaking as many as 12.6M accounts. Another notable breach occurred in China, when a breach of a Chinese adult content site Hjedd resulted in around 11M accounts being leaked. This accounted for around a third of all Chinese accounts leaked in 2022.

Globally, 2022 had 68% less breached users than 2021. While the majority of countries around the world showed improvement, the sharpest victim spikes were spotted in Indonesia (269%), Sri Lanka (204%), Russia (191%), Uzbekistan (73%) and China (45%).

Agneska Sablovskaja, lead researcher at Surfshark, said, “While these numbers remain unsettling, we’re happy to report an immense global decrease of 68% compared to last year. Some countries, including U.S., India and Brazil, managed to improve their situation significantly, while Indonesia, China and Russia experienced the biggest surges in data breaches year-over-year.”