Breaches and hacks are becoming more and more frequent in thedigital age, and the price of recovery keeps growing. Clickthrough to read about five of the most infamous examples oflarge-scale cybercrime.

Related: Wi-Fi and Mobile Devices Add to Cybercrime Cost andConfusion

South Carolina Dept. of Revenue

Government departments collect an abundance of personallyidentifiable information, including social security and credit cardnumbers used by taxpayers, which makes the departments obvioustargets for cybercrime. South Carolina's Dept. of Revenue exposed3.6 million SSNs to a hacker in during a series attacks beginningon October 10, 2012 and ending on September 13, 2012.

The vast majority of the credit numbers were encrypted, butabout 16,000 were not. None of the SSNs were encrypted. The hackerused a foreign IP address to gain access to the data. No publicfunds were put at risk, and an investigation into the breach isstill ongoing. The Hawkins Law Firm is targeting Governor NikkiHaley, the S.C. Dept. of Revenue and the data security firmTrustwave in a lawsuit for failing to protect citizeninformation.

Anyone who filed a South Carolina tax return since 1998 is urgedto find out if they were among those affected. The state isproviding one year of credit monitoring and identity theftprotection to victims.

TJX Cos. Inc. and Heartland Payment Systems

In July 2005, 94 million credit cards and more than 450,000personal records including driver's license and SSNs were exposedin a hack of TJX, the parent company of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls,HomeGoods and other similar stores. One theory is that hackersgained access through the company's in-store job applicationkiosks, which were not protected by a firewall. Another is that thedata was stolen during a wire transfer between two Florida stores.TJX settled a related lawsuit with Visa for $41 million and othercosts were incurred while dealing with regulatory

In 2008, Heartland Payment Systems, a payment processingcompany, discovered spyware installed on data systems allowed 134million credit cards to be obtained. The company paid settlements of $60 million with Visa, $3.5million with American Express, $4 million in consumer class actionlawsuits and more than $26 million in legal fees. Albert Gonzalez,ringleader of both breaches, was sentenced to 60 years in prison inMarch 2010. Eleven others were arrested on related charges.

WikiLeaks

This online media organization posted 90,000 classified militarydocuments for public viewing on its website. Julian Assange, anAustralian publisher and activist, launched WikiLeaks in 2006 anddesigned the site to be untraceable and uncensorable. Anyone cansubmit information anonymously.

The documents were submitted by Bradley Manning, a U.S. Armysoldier with access to classified information databases. He usedhis security clearance to copy the documents onto CDs and USBdrives. The White House called the leak publication“irresponsible,” and there were fears that details such as names offrontline soldiers could be released and possibly endanger lives.Assange and supporters consider WikiLeaks a system forwhistleblowing and uncovering corrupt actions of institutions andgovernments.

Manning was arrested in May 2012 on suspicion of having passedthe classified materials to WikiLeaks. He was charged withcommunicating national defense information to an unauthorizedsource and aiding the enemy. The trial is expected to beginFebruary 2013.

Sony

In the spring of 2011, Sony suffered back-to-back hacks thatleft more than 84 million accounts from Sony Online Entertainmentand PlayStation Network users at risk. The cyber attack compromisedinformation such as names, addresses, e-mail addresses, birthdates, gender, phone numbers, credit card numbers (includingexpiration dates), logins and passwords.

These attacks spanned multiple countries and also left 12,700non-U.S. customers' personally identifiable information vulnerable.The information was stored in what Sony called “an outdateddatabase from 2007.” In an attempt at compensation, the networkgave all of its customers 30 days of additional subscription timeand 30 free days of premium PlayStation Plus service. A classaction lawsuit, Thompson v. Sony ComputerEntertainment, was filed May 2011 in the name of personswho purchased a console, suffered loss of service and hadpersonally identifiable information stolen.

RSA Security

RSA Security provides SecurID authentication tokens to customernetworks for security. However, a hack in March 2011 resulted in aspeculated 40 million stolen employee records. Hackers posedas individuals and companies familiar to employees to try to gaintheir trust and gain network access to secured segments of thenetwork. This hack ironically proved that even security companiesare not immune to breaches.

The company initially claimed that no customer networks werebreached, but subsequent attacks on Lockheed-Martin, L3 and otherswere believed to be partially related to the RSA crime. RSA offeredto recall and reissue customer security tokens in the event thatattackers stole technology allowing them to generate validtokens.

Worried about the saftey of your business's data? Read “Wi-Fiand Mobile Devices Add to Cybercrime Cost and Confusion” by ShannonFrech, including an interview with Travelers' enterprise cyberlead.