Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, California Department of Justice, October 2014

“California is the birthplace of the digital revolution that has transformed nearly every aspect of the world in which we live. Yet even as technological innovation and advances bring us greater convenience, efficiency, and productivity, they are also generating new vulnerabilities. The Internet has created a new frontier for criminal activity in the form of cybercrime, such as data breaches. The term “data breach” refers to any situation in which an individual or group steals sensitive, protected or confidential data. By compromising sensitive information, such as payment card data, Social Security numbers and health records, data breaches place the privacy, security, and economic wellbeing of businesses and consumers at risk. Increasingly, highly sophisticated criminal organizations and state-sponsored entities — located as far away as Russia, China and Eastern Europe — are responsible for breaches With the world’s eighth largest economy and more than 38 million consumers, California is uniquely impacted by data breaches. In 2012, 17 percent of the data breaches recorded in the United States took place in California – more than any other state Even more troubling, the number of reported breaches in California increased by 28 percent in 2013.”