The Identity Theft Resource Center's (ITRC) 2008 breach report provides a snapshot of data breaches in different areas of the professional world. The researchers mined articles published that year for information on data breaches in the United States, and 2008 saw 656 data breaches, up 47 percent from 2007's 446.

The 656 breaches encompassed 35,691,255 compromised records in these five areas:

• 18,731,947 records from the financial sector in 78 reported breaches;
• 5,886,960 records from the business sector in 240 breaches;
• 806,142 records from the educational sector in 131 breaches;
• 2,954,373 records from the government/military sector in 110 breaches; and
• 7,311,833 records from the medical/health-care sector in 97 breaches.

Where causal factors for the breaches could be identified, the ITRC grouped them into five categories -- insider theft, hacking, data on the move, accidental exposure and subcontractors. The subcontractor category, when breaches occurred while data was with third parties, could overlap with the other four. The data-on-the-move category, when equipment like laptops and removable devices containing data was misplaced, and the accidental exposure category were attributed to human error.