BankInfoSecurity nickster2407) • February 5, 2021 James Lee, COO, Identity Theft Resource Center The decline in the total number of U.S. data breaches in 2020 isn't all good news; it reflects that hackers are changing their tactics, says James Lee of the Identity Theft Resource Center, who offers an analysis of the center's new data breach report. "We hit our high watermark in terms of the number of breaches in 2017," he notes. Since then, breaches have declined, including a 19% drop last year. As more hackers focus on lucrative ransomware and business email compromise scams, they don't need to obtain as much data via breaches to be successful, he explains.