A total of 606 data breaches have been recorded so far in 2014 by the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). About 77.6 million records have been exposed, including the breach of 56 million credit and debit card numbers at Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD), the largest breach ever recorded for a retail company.

Not included in the count to date is the reported breach at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), which involved compromised information on 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. As many as 13 other financial institutions may also have been attacked by the same group.

The total number of data breaches increased by 17 in the week to October 14, and the medical/health care sector continues to post the largest percentage of the total breaches, 43% (259) out of the total of 606. The number of records exposed in these breaches totaled 7.15 million.

On the basis of the number of records exposed, the business sector accounts for 64.4 million breached records in 211 incidents.

The number of banking/credit/financial breaches increased by one to 24 incidents, involving 1.17 million records, just 4% of the 606 total and 1.5% of the number of records exposed.

A total of 242 breaches to date have involved Social Security numbers and 99 have involved credit or debit cards.

Since 2005 there have been 4,854 data breaches tabulated, involving nearly 670 million exposed records.

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