Minority Business Empowerment Zone

In the past year, more than 88 million Americans have had their identity endangered as the result of data breaches according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Topping the list: a case at the Veterans Administration, where an unidentified analyst took the employee information of 26 million veterans home in a laptop computer that was then burglarized from his home.

A recent report authored by Dr. Doug Jacobson, director of the Iowa State University\'s Information Assurance Program, finds that the biggest risk of data breaches or theft comes from careless employees or consultants who don\'t properly secure the data they are entrusted with. The report audited 126 companies who suffered a data loss and found that more than 54 percent of lost data was the result of employee error, with only 34 percent being due to outside hackers.