The IRS, meanwhile, lost taxpayer information, while the Army National Guard also announced a data breach.Įven the technologies meant to protect consumers from hacking and other cyber threats weren’t safe from data breaches in 2015. According to NBC News, the breach affects 21.5 million people and could be a major problem for national security. government personnel-as well as spouses, family members, and other contacts. A breach of the Office of Personnel Management compromised the background check data of U.S. On the governmental end of the spectrum, meanwhile, the breaches were even more devastating. Crowdfunding site Patreon was also a target, and while the site evidently didn’t lose credit card data, names, email addresses, and posts from the site were compromised. The hotel chain of presidential candidate Donald Trump was compromised with credit card data again being the target. On the retail or consumer end of the spectrum, drug stores like CVS, Walgreens, Costco, and Rite Aid were all hit, with customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit information compromised in the fallout.

In a recent feature covering some of the biggest hacks and data breaches of 2015, ZDNet dropped a chilling statistic: “Almost every American has been affected by at least one data breach this year.” Indeed, it was the year of the data breach, a year that saw everyone from retailers to the government facing cyber security disasters.

A Brief Recap of Some of 2015’s Biggest Data Breaches

Customer fallout after lastpass breach