Worst data breaches of 2012.

• Position: DATA SECURITY - Brief article

AS of July 3, the Identity Theft Resource Center RC) reported it had tracked 213 U.S. data breaches in 2012, exposing about 8.5 million records. The key targets among the exposed records were payment cards and data related to customers, university students, and patients.

Among the top 15 breaches this year:

* The New York State Electric & Gas Co. located in Rochester, N.Y., suffered a breach that ex posed 1.8 million files that contained customer Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and bank account numbers. The breach was caused by a contractor's unauthorized access.

* Utah Department of Technology Services located in Salt Lake City, Utah, exposed 780,000 patient files related to Medicaid claims when the information was stolen from a server by hackers operating out of Europe.

* Emory Healthcare located in Georgia had 315,000 patient records exposed after the information stored on 10 computer disks went missing from a storage facility. A class action lawsuit could cost the hospital $200 million.

* South Carolina Department of Health and Human...