The year 2014 may be remembered for a number of less obvious happenings: Russia hosting the Olympic Games oblivious of its impeding economic havoc; Brazil hosting the World Cup despite vocal protests from its own citizens; the United Nations observance of 2014 as the International Year of Crystallography.
One more dubious honor 2014 will be known for is setting a record for cyber hacks and data breaches with over 3,000 incidents—including five among the worst ever as counted by records leaked, according to analysis by the Risk Based Security, a data security consultant firm.
Over a billion records were exposed mostly through hacking or fraud, and almost half were in the United States.
But two of the top 10 worst breaches also occurred in South Korea last year where almost 400 million records were exposed, including insider fraud that spilled 104 million credit card records.
Americans had their credit card information stolen as well, over 50 million credit cards in fact, in the infamous September Home Depot hack.
Two more breaches made the top 10: In May, 145 million eBay account details were hacked, including passwords; in June, a hack de-anonymized the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission exposing customer trip information.
