Nearly 14 million data records exposed through 15 business data breaches.

CIO.com recently published a slide deck highlighting the 15 worst data breaches of the year 2012 (to date).
Considering the massive increase in cyber crime and the multitude of additional risks to company data it boggles the mind as to how businesses and organizations (of all sizes) can still turn a blind eye to the big, hairy, gorilla sitting on their backs.

Here are some of the biggest and worst data breaches of 2012.

California Dept. of Child Support Services

Located: Sacramento
No. of data records exposed: 800,000 adults and children on four computer storage devices lost by IBM and Iron Mountain, believed lost in transit between Boulder and Sacramento because of falling out of an unsecured container FedEx was transporting.

Utah Dept. of Technology Services

Located: Salt Lake City, Utah
No. of records exposed: 780,000 patient files related to Medicaid claims stolen from a server by hackers believed to be operating out of Eastern Europe, Utah’s DTS disclosed in April. In May, Utah CIO, Steven Fletcher, resigned due to it.

University of Nebraska

Located: Lincoln, Neb.
No. of records exposed: A data breach of 654,000 files of personal data related to students, alumni, parents and university employees from the Nebraska Student Information Systems database; a student is the suspected culprit.

Emory Healthcare, Inc.

Located: Georgia
No. of records exposed: Data related to 315,000 patients, including Social Security numbers, had been stored on 10 computer disks but went missing from a storage facility; a class-action lawsuit underway could cost the hospital $200million.

South Carolina Dept. of Health & Human Services

No. of records exposed: In April, the agency disclosed a major data breach of 228,435 Medicaid beneficiaries. A former employee for the South Carolina agency has been arrested for transferring this information via e-mail.

Housatonic Community College

Number of records exposed: In April, information on 87,667 members of the campus community on two computers, possibly due to malware infections.

Howard University Hospital

Located: Washington, D.C.
No. of records exposed: Health information on 34,503 patients due to personal laptop of a former contractor for the hospital being stolen.

To view the full slide deck of worst data breaches on CIO.com please click here