Data Breach: Not Only Can Happen to You, and Your Competitors (but Now It’s Being Publicly Reported)

As state data breach reporting regimes develop, we are going to be seeing more reporting of breaches to law enforcement authorities. If you want to see what this abstract concept of “reporting” looks like (and how your own reports might be listed for the public to see), go to the web site of the New Hampshire Attorney General. On that site, you can read about 20 New Hampshire breaches that have been reported thus far in 2009 for that modestly sized state. And if you want to get a feel for the national scope of data breaches, check out the Identify Theft Resource Center. As of last week, they list 121 breaches and some 1,552,273 exposed records.  That’s more than a breach per day (and over 17,000 exposed records per day).