There have been a total of 589 data breaches recorded so far in 2014 by the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). About 76.7 million records have be exposed, including the breach of 56 million credit and debit card numbers at Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD), the largest breach ever recorded for a retail company.

Not included in the count is the reported breach at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), which may involve compromised information on 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. As many as 13 other financial institutions may also have been attacked by the same group.

Dairy Queen, which is owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) suffered attacks at some 395 locations, involving about 600,000 credit cards. First reports of some of these attacks were made in August.

The total number of data breaches increased by 21 in the week to October 7, and the medical/health care sector continues to post the largest percentage of the total breaches, 43% (253) out of the total of 589. The number of records exposed in these breaches totaled 7.15 million.

On the basis of the number of records exposed, the business sector accounts for 64.4 million breached records in 206 incidents.

The number of banking/credit/financial breaches remained unchanged at 23 incidents, involving 1.12 million records, just 4% of the 589 total and 1.5% of the number of records exposed.

A total of 236 breaches to date have involved Social Security numbers and 97 have involved credit or debit cards.

Since 2005 there have been 4,837 data breaches tabulated, involving more than 668.7 million exposed records.

ALSO READ: J.P. Morgan Not the Only Bank Hacked

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