The “official” kick-off for the holiday shopping season comes next week on Black Friday, and probably not coincidentally, last year’s massive data breach at Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) reportedly began on November 27, just two days before Black Friday. That breach has cost the company $158 million through the first three quarters of the year, and it also cost Target’s CEO and CIO their jobs.

The odds of another such attack this year are better than even. Data security expert Brian Krebs says, “Any retailers that are still handling unencrypted credit card data on their networks remain an attractive and lucrative target for attackers.” You have been warned.

The latest report from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reveals that there has been a record total of 679 data breaches recorded through November 18, 2014, and more than 81 million records have been exposed. The previous record high was set at 662 in 2010, and this year’s total to date is about 25% higher year-over-year.

The total number of data breaches increased by 13 in the week and the medical/health care sector continues to post the largest percentage of the total breaches, 42.4% (288) out of the total of 679. The number of records exposed in these breaches totaled 7.79 million.

On the basis of the number of records exposed, the business sector accounts for 64.7 million breached records in 218 incidents.

The number of banking/credit/financial breaches remained flat at 41 for the year to date and involved 1.18 million records, some 6% of the total and 1.5% of the number of records exposed.

Since 2005 there have been 4,925 data breaches tabulated, involving nearly 673.5 million exposed records.

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