A new report from the Identity Theft Resource Center says there were 6,013 reported cases of data breaches since 2005 across the government, financial services, healthcare and education sectors.
The nonprofit organization collaborated with Arizona-based information security firm IDT911 on the study and found that nearly 6.2 million personal data have been exposed in 2016 alone.
According to the report, breaches in the government sector resulted in the exposure of 57.4 million Social Security numbers and 389,000 debit or credit cards of government employees and service personnel over the last decade.
Negligence or errors by government employees led to 61 breaches that compromised 7 million records.
ITRC noted that the Internal Revenue Service saw a 400 percent increase in malware and phishing incidents between January 2016 and February 2016.
“Tax refund fraud continues to rise creating almost unbearable issues for victims nationwide,†said ITRC CEO Eva Velasquez, CEO of ITRC.
“It is our belief that the 575 healthcare breaches since 2010 – that have exposed more than 142 million Social Security numbers – are contributing to this increase,†she added.
