An unusual data hacking incident was reported last week. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that four of its websites have been compromised by hacker attacks. NOAA did not say what, if any, data was compromised nor did it say from where the attacks came, but a Virginia Congressman told the Washington Post that NOAA confirmed to him that China was responsible for the attack.

Earlier in November, Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) reported that the same hacker attack that compromised some 56 million credit cards records also resulted in the loss of about 53 million email addresses. None of the files containing the email addresses include personal information like passwords or payment card information. These records have not yet been officially added to the breached records count.

Home Depot’s announcement came after the latest report from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), revealing that there have been a total of 666 data breaches recorded through November 12, 2014. More than 81 million records have been exposed, up by nearly 3 million in the week. The previous record high was set at 662 in 2010, and this year’s total to date is about 26% higher year-over-year.

The total number of data breaches increased by 22 in the week, and the medical/health care sector continues to post the largest percentage of the total breaches: 43.1% (287) of the total of 666. The number of records exposed in these breaches totaled 7.71 million.

On the basis of the number of records exposed, the business sector accounts for 64.6 million breached records in 208 incidents.

The number of banking/credit/financial breaches rose to 41 for the year to date and involved 1.18 million records, some 6.2% of the total and 1.5% of the number of records exposed.

Since 2005 there have been 4,912 data breaches tabulated, involving more than 673 million exposed records.

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