Data Security Breaches in 2008

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse is a non-profit consumer information and advocacy organization that tracks, monitors and educates individuals on identity theft. One of their reports,  A Chronology of Data Breaches, lists attacks from 2005 to present. While the information is informative, we took the raw 2008  data and analysed the number of cases,  industries and means of the theft. Here are some of the results:

310 reported data compromise cases

233 of the cases caused over 33.7 million Americans’ identities compromised

77 of the cases could not even identify the number of Americans whose identities were compromised

We broke down the breaches into four industries: Medical, Business, Government and Education

• Businesses accounted for 95 cases, over 21.4 Million identities, and 41 unknown quantities
• Education accounted for 96 cases, over 3.2 Million identities, and 13 unknown quantities
• Government accounted for 67 cases, over 4.8 Million identities, and 16 unknown quantities
• Medical accounted for 52 cases, over 4.3 Million identities, and 7 unknown quantities

From a business prospective, stolen data does not need to be used by thieves for the business to still be accountable, a privacy protection violation and have to pay fines, legal suits and other direct/indirect costs.