Security Breaches Exposed 22.8M New Yorkers’ Personal Records

A new report shows 22.8 million private records of New Yorkers have been exposed in data security breaches reported by 3,000 businesses, nonprofits and governments over the past eight years.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says in a report Tuesday that deliberate hacking was responsible for 40 percent of the 5,000 incidents, which exposed a majority of the records, followed by lost or stolen equipment, insider wrongdoing and inadvertent errors.

Since 2005, New York law has required breached institutions to advise the attorney general and the individuals when computerized private data consisting of names and account, social security or driver’s license numbers were acquired by an unauthorized user.

The 7.3 million records exposed in 900 security breaches last year cost institutions an estimated $1.37 billion to investigate, rectify and help customers.