Help

BI’s Article search uses Boolean search capabilities. If you are not familiar with these principles, here are some quick tips.

To search specifically for more than one word, put the search term in quotation marks. For example, “workers compensation”. This will limit your search to that combination of words.

To search for a combination of terms, use quotations and the & symbol. For example, “hurricane” & “loss”.

Login Register Subscribe

Data breaches affecting Californians up sharply in 2013: Study

Reprints
Data breaches affecting Californians up sharply in 2013: Study

There were 167 data breaches affecting more than 500 California residents per occurrence in 2013, a 28% increase over the 131 breaches reported in 2012, according to a report issued last week by California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris' office.

Records containing information on more than 18.5 million California residents were involved in the breaches reported in 2013, which was an increase of more than 600% over the 2.5 million records breached in 2012.

However, the 2013 breaches included two very large incidents that skew the data, according to their report: one involving Minneapolis-based Target Corp. and another involving Washington-based LivingSocial Inc., a coupon marketing firm, which reported a data breach in April 2013.

These breaches each affected 7.5 million Californians. Without those, the number of records affected would have been 3.5 million, a 35% increase over 2012, according to the report.

A total of 53% of the 2013 breaches were caused by computer intrusions, including malware and hacking. The remaining breaches resulted from physical loss or theft of laptops or other devices containing personal information, 26%; unintentional errors, 18%; and intentional misuse by insiders, 4%, according to the report.

The retail industry reported the most breaches in 2013 at 43, or 26% of the total, followed by finance and insurance, with 33, or 20%; and health care with 25, or 15% of the total.

Read Next