If there were 2 million bank robberies in just one day in the United States, it is likely that someone would sit up and take notice. According to the FBI, the equivalent of that number of bank robberies is taking place every day in cyberspace. In only the past half year computer hackers have made off with 2.4 million financial records, on average, every single day. According to USA Today 439 records were stolen and 500 million were compromised during the past year.
“We’re in a day when a person can commit about 15,000 bank robberies sitting in their basement,”
said Robert Anderson, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Cyber Response and Services Branch.
Some of the better known businesses that have been targets of cyber-thievery are Target, Home Depot and JP Morgan Chase. Tim Pawlenty, president of the Financial Services Roundtable and former Republican governor of Minnesota, said that around half of all adult Americans, or about 110 million people, have had their financial data compromised one way or another during the past year. The vast majority of businesses who have been hacked don’t even realize their accounts have fallen into the wrong hands until financial institutions or customers tell them, according to a study conducted by Verizon.