Washington law mandates entities report data breaches affecting over 500 residents to the Attorney General's Office. This dataset details the specific types of personal information compromised in each reported breach, supporting the AGO's Annual Data Breach Report. It is maintained by data.wa.gov and was last updated in April 2026.
Use Cases
- Analyze trends in DataBreachCause and CyberattackType over Year to identify evolving threats.
- Correlate IndustryType with InformationType to determine which sectors expose sensitive data like financial information.
- Assess breach scale by comparing WashingtoniansAffectedRange with BreachLifecycleRange.
- Track reporting timelines by examining the duration between DateStart, DateAware, and DateSubmitted.
Strengths
- Provides granular breakdown of compromised InformationType per breach.
- Includes multiple temporal columns (Year, DateStart, DateAware, DateSubmitted) for timeline analysis.
- Categorizes breaches by BusinessType, IndustryType, and EntityState for demographic analysis.
Limitations
- Row count and total number of affected individuals are unknown, limiting statistical certainty.
- Limited to breaches meeting Washington's reporting threshold of over 500 affected residents.
- Geographic scope is restricted to breaches impacting Washington residents.
Provenance
- Source
- Washington State Attorney General's Office via data.wa.gov.
- Collection Method
- Mandatory notifications submitted by entities experiencing a data breach.
- Time Range
- null
- Freshness
- Last updated April 2026.
- Geography
- Breaches affecting residents of Washington State, USA.