Appropriately, 2014 has been called “The Year of the Breach.”1 The first half of the year saw a series of retailers attacked with malware infecting their respective “Point of Sale” systems. Purportedly perpetrated by a couple of Russian teenagers, Target, Michaels, Neiman-Marcus, P.F. Chang’s and Home Depot were among the prominent companies hit with some variation of “Black POS.”2
The summer saw a number of financial institutions hacked. Probably the most prominent one occurred at JP Morgan Chase which acknowledged that the breach affected accounts belonging to 76 million households and seven million small businesses. In August, 2014′s largest health care incident struck Community Health Systems, causing the release of personal identifying information of 4.5 million patients.3
