Get Guardian on Google• Nigeria ranks 56th as breaches rise by 6% in Q3
Cyberattacks are escalating worldwide, with hackers intensifying their activities and breaching systems at an alarming pace.
Latest data from a cybersecurity company, Surfshark, released yesterday, revealed that global breaches in Q3 2026 grew by 13.2 per cent compared to Q2, reaching 121.8 million compromised accounts between July and September.
While the U.S. continues to lead overall numbers with 38.1 million leaked accounts, other countries experienced significant and dramatic shifts during this period.
Most notably, the UK has seen a sharp rise in compromised accounts, doubling its quarterly count to 5.8 million, a 121.6 per cent surge that made it the most affected nation in Europe. At the same time, Ukraine surged to sixth place globally from 47th, with 2.6 million accounts breached in just three months, underscoring intensified cyber pressure and ongoing digital threats in the region.
Chief Security Officer at Surfshark, Tomas Stamulis, said that the threat isn’t just about the total number of hacks. The density of the attacks had also increased across many European countries, making the region as a whole more dangerous. Estonia had the highest concentration of breaches in the world (18 breached accounts per 1000 people), followed by Australia, the US, and the UK.
Globally, in Q3 2026, the U.S. saw the highest number of compromised accounts (38.1 million), followed by Brazil (seven million), the UK (5.8 million), India (5.5 million), and Australia (3.1 million).
Meanwhile, France saw a relative cooling-off, dropping outside the top three most-breached countries for the first time this year, with 2.4 million breached accounts.
