According to Verizon Communications, "More electronic records were breached in 2008 than the previous four years combined."  Scary numbers when you think about it. You would think we were getting better at preventing security breaches these days but it looks like the hackers are staying ahead of the security experts.

Verizon released their 2009 Data Breach Study today and let us know that in 2008, based on their caseload, there were 285 million compromised records from 90 confirmed breaches. Cybercrime is flourishing and as you would expect, the financial sector was hit hardest. They accounted for 93% of the breaches that occurred in 2008.

According to the report 90% of the breaches were attributed to groups know to engaged in organized crime. Eastern Europe seems to be the current breeding ground and haven for these groups as the mafia goes digital.

So ready for the truly scary part of the report? Almost 90%, 81 of the 90 breaches, could have been easily avoided with some basic security measures.  These hacks were not strokes of genius but a direct result of mistakes and lack of oversight. A meager 17% of them were classified as highly sophisticated and 81% of the companies hacked had been found to be in non-compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI) they are subject to.

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Scary stuff. Although there is nothing you can do to keep your data safe on the servers of financial institutions, at least make sure your PC is secure. If you don't have it, be sure to install anti-virus software or internet security software and keep them updated. Don't let your virus definition subscriptions expire.

May 2009 be a safe a year for you and your data!