Millions of consumers in Massachusetts have been affected by
data breaches since 2007.
Between October 31, 2007 and September 30, 2011, 3.16 million Bay Staters had their personal or financial information exposed by data breaches, according to new data from the
Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation. In all, there have been more than 1,800 breaches affecting state residents in that time.
The healthcare industry actually experienced very few breaches during this time, at only 214, but the number of people exposed in these incidents was more than any other field, the report said. In all, more than 980,000 people had their information exposed as a result of medical data breaches, though much of that was the result of one such incident in 2010.
Ondrej Krehel, the chief information security officer for
Identity Theft 911, has a blog about how data breaches can affect both consumers and the organizations that suffer them, and what can be done by both parties to increase their protection from these incidents in the future.
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