A report suggests that at least 1 billion data records were compromised by over 1,500 data breaches in 2014.
According to the Verge, the report from the security firm Gemalto shows 54 percent of the data breaches were related to identity theft - up from 23 percent last year - surprisingly outpacing attacks for access to financial information, which only accounted for 17 percent of the breaches in 2014.
As compared to 2013, the overall data breaches rose by 49 percent while compromised data records went up by 78 percent.
Gonen, Gemalto's vice president of strategy for identity and data protection said that not only are data breach numbers rising, but the breaches are becoming more severe.
He added that being breached was no more a question of 'if' but 'when.