2.5 million Californians had personal information put at risk through an electronic data breach in 2012. Retail industry reported the most data breaches in 2012: 34 (26 percent of the total reported breaches), followed by finance and insurance with 30 (23 percent) More than half of the breaches involved Social Security numbers, which pose the greatest risk of the most serious types of identity theft. The average (mean) breach incident involved the information of 22,500 individuals, with five breaches of 100,000 or more individuals personal information.”]

