We all know about threats to the valuable data we store everyday, we hear about them all the time. There’s always some anonymous hacker shutting down a website, or publishing someones private data. It’s just something that has become part of living in the age of information. After all, you can’t have so much information so readily available and not have it fall into the wrong hands once in awhile.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot more to data breaches than just the hacks we hear about in the press. Verizon has taken a particular interest in tracking breaches of data and has been doing so since 2004. You might not be surprised to learn that last year, 2011, was the second highest year for breaches ever.

The breaches occurred in all kinds of industry including; banking, healthcare, retail, information management, food service, and probably just about any field you can think of. They also happened all over the world. So what can be done?

This next infographic from Backgroundcheck.org gives us the lowdown on where these breaches are happening, what we can do to better protect ourselves, and what these breaches are costing us. Everybody should take a look at this one, it’s packed with useful data management information.

Check it out: