Theft of personal data more than triples this year

According to a USA TODAY analysis of data losses reported over the past two years, more than 162 million records have been reported lost or stolen in 2007, triple the 49.7 million that went missing in 2006.

The article states:

Names, birth dates, account numbers and Social Security numbers have become like gold in the cybercrime underground. Meanwhile, organizations expose rich veins of such data as they convert paper documents into digital records. Business data worldwide are expected to swell to 988 billion gigabytes by 2010, up from 161 billion gigabytes in 2006, says researcher IDC.

As they "cram more and more data into a single place," companies and agencies present thieves with more opportunities for a big score, says Benjamin Jun, vice president of technology at Cryptography Research.

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Organized-crime rings are on the lookout for unattended laptop computers, mail that contains disks or tapes and employees susceptible to bribery, says John Watters, CEO of security firm iSight Partners. "They're looking for the weak link," he says, "and aiming their resources at it."

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