Many organizations store sensitive data in online databases. But much of this data is left unprotected, without even requiring basic authentication, making it easy for hackers to access the stored information.

CyberNews conducted a study to find how many databases were easily accessible, and where in the world that data was located. It determined that there are 29,219 unprotected Elasticsearch, Hadoop, and MongoDB databases and 19,000 terabytes of data left easily accessible to the world.

Of the three database types examined here, Hadoop led the way with nearly 19TB of data exposed across 459 total databases. Elasticsearch, meanwhile, had 19,814 exposed databases offering access to over 143TB of data. MongoDB has 8,946 databases leaving 6.5TB in data unsecured.

Where are these databases located? China tops the list with 12,943 exposed databases found online, leading all other countries by a wide margin. The US was found to have 4,512 exposed databases. Both countries have a significant number of unsecured databases with Elasticsearch and MongoDB.

Rounding out the top five countries are Germany, France, and India. Hong Kong and Singapore also make appearances in the study via unprotected Elasticsearch and MongoDB databases, respectively.

The scariest thing is that CyberNews believes the true number of unsecured databases to be much higher. All databases found to have default credentials enabled were left out of the study, but hackers could still gain access to that data.