As you begin preparations for tax season you might not be feeling a lot of government love. In fact, with the economy the way it is right now, you might be feeling downright hostile. And as you review your household budget yet again for one more way to cut back on expenses, you might be dripping tears onto your keyboard.

Here’s some (sort of) good news from the Identity Theft Resource Center that might help you lighten up a little: Government agencies were responsible for only 16.7% of all data breaches in 2008.

And now the bad news (because when the subject is data breaches, there’s always going to be some bad news): There were 656 data breaches last year, representing a 47% increase in the number of data breaches that occurred in 2007.

Local, state and federal governments were to blame for a total of 110 information leaks last year. The causes for those data losses break down as follows:

• 28 resulted from the improper protection of information while traveling over the government network.
• 22 were attributed to insider theft.
• 20 occurred when employees accidentally exposed citizens’ information.
• 15 have been chalked up to subcontractors with sloppy systems security.
• 5 were the product of hackers.

Which federal agency wins the prize for the biggest bungling of data protection? The U.S. Army wins this dubious distinction for their inadvertent Internet posting of promotion selection lists that contained the names and Social Security numbers of more than 50,000 officers.

So, what does all this tell us? While you’re trimming your budget leave an extra $9 a month for Life Lock protection services. Enroll using the LifeLock discount code Defense for the lowest available price.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 3:20 pm and is filed under LifeLock data breach protection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.