10 Biggest Data Breaches of 2015

10 Biggest Data Breaches of 2015

With the New Year just a couple of weeks away, now is the ideal time to reflect on the past year. For many corporations, this means reviewing what went wrong with their data security. This is because 2015 was yet another banner year for hackers and data thieves. In fact, data theft was so rampant in 2015 that you were more likely to have become a victim of data theft than not.

And, odds are your information was stolen in one of the following ten scenarios, which combined make for the largest of 2015’s data breaches (listed in descending order).

10. Trump Hotels

Donald Trump might be making some controversy on the political scene, but in October, his name was involved in another controversy, this one a data breach that involved seven of his hotels. In October, it was discovered that seven of his hotels were hacked for almost the entire year with the thieves stealing the credit card data of a still unknown number of people.

9. V-Tech

In late November, it was discovered that V-Tech, a leading electronics toy manufacturer, suffered a security breach in which the hackers stole 4.8 million records, including a database consisting of the names, ages, genders, and birthdates of more than 200,000 children. The breach was blamed on V-Tech’s use of poor password security.

8. Patreon

In October, the popular crowdfunding service, Patreon, was hacked in what would turn out to be one of the biggest data breaches of the year. The hackers published 15GB worth of the company’s data online in a massive data dump. Patreon customers had their names, email addresses, and posts displayed online for anyone to see, although credit card information and social security numbers were not compromised in the attack.

7. T-Mobile

In September, T-Mobile suffered a substantial data breach that affected more than 15 million of the cell phone company’s customers. The data breach was directly related to the cyber-attack enacted on Experian, the credit bureau used by T-Mobile for its credit checks. Those affected by the breach had their names, social security numbers, addresses, birthdates, and in some cases, even their passport information stolen.

6. Scottrade

In October, the retail brokerage firm, Scottrade, suffered a data breach that resulted in the theft of contact information for more than 4.6 million of its customers. The breach had been going on for two years, but the four-man team of hackers was finally brought to justice and charged with hacking.

5. Ashley Madison

In one of 2015’s more notorious and media-covered data breaches, the online adult dating service, Ashley Madison, suffered a breach that involved the public posting of more than 37 million of the service’s members in a massive data dump. The breach and public posting resulted in thousands of broken marriages and several suicides.

4. Excellus BlueCross BlueShield

In September, it was discovered that Excellus BlueCross BlueShield suffered a cyber-attack in 2013 that resulted in more than 10 million of its members being affected. The information stolen included customer names, birthdates, mailing addresses, social security numbers, financial account data, and claim information.

3. Retail Pharmacy Hack

In July, retail pharmacy giants, CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens, and Costco were forced to pull their online photo print services from their websites due to a hack that targeted the popular service. Cyber thieves were able to obtain customer credit card data, email and postal addresses, phone numbers, and passwords. It is still unclear of just how many people were affected by the crime.

2. Internal Revenue Service

One would think if any organization would be impenetrable, it would be the IRS. But, that belief came crashing down in May when it was discovered that the IRS had a data leak that involved more than 100,000 taxpayers. Although this breach didn’t have the numbers of some of the others on this list, the potential for disaster is significant and thus far, the breach has cost American taxpayers approximately $50 million in fraudulent claims.

1. Anthem

In February, health insurer Anthem suffered a major security breach that ranks as one of the year’s biggest. In the attack, more than 80 million employee and patient records (as well as information from 19 million rejected customers) were stolen. This means than one in three Americans were impacted by this data breach alone. Making matters worse is the fact that it was determined that most of the data was never encrypted.

Don’t Risk It – Make Data Destruction a Part of Your Data Security Strategy

Most of these companies had their data breached by online hackers, but one of the other most common ways data can fall into the wrong hands is by not properly destroying the data on IT equipment that’s no longer in use. At Liquid Technology, we employ the industry’s most effective data wiping software. After we perform our data wiping service, your data is erased and unrecoverable. It’s the easiest and most effective way to protect your customers and your company.

To learn more about our data wiping service or to schedule service, just call Liquid Technology today at 800-797-5478.