Technology

Data Breach Losses Top More Than 78 Million Records to Date in 2014

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The 56 million credit and debit card numbers that were compromised when Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) was hacked earlier this year were not the only casualties of the largest data breach ever recorded for a retail company. On Thursday, Home Depot said that about 53 million email addresses were also stolen. The files containing the email addresses did not include passwords, payment card information or other personal information the company said.

Home Depot’s announcement came after the latest report from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) revealing that there have been a total of 644 data breaches recorded so far in 2014. More than 78.16 million records have been exposed, up about 270,000 in the week through November 3.

The total number of data breaches increased by 23 in the week and the medical/health care sector continues to post the largest percentage of the total breaches, 42.4% (273) out of the total of 644. The number of records exposed in these breaches totaled 7.49 million.

On the basis of the number of records exposed, the business sector accounts for 64.6 million breached records in 206 incidents.

The number of banking/credit/financial breaches rose to 40 for the year to date and involved 1.18 million records, less than 6% of the 644 total and 1.5% of the number of records exposed.

Since 2005 there have been 4,890 data breaches tabulated, involving just over 670 million exposed records.

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