One of the largest thefts of credit card details was revealed last week by web services provider Network Solutions, when it disclosed that hackers broke into its servers and stole details of over 573,000 debit and credit card accounts from its customers.

The company discovered in early June that its servers had been hacked into by unknown parties.  The servers provide e-commerce services such as Web site hosting and payment processing to nearly 4,500 small to mid-size online stores.

Worse, the hackers left behind malicious code, which allowed them to intercept financial information from people who made purchases at the online stores hosted on those servers from March to June 09.

While we often focus on data losses and leaks through lost or stolen portable storage devices, it’s a useful reminder that there are other attack vectors too.

With around 250 data breaches publicly reported in the United States between Jan. 1 and Jun. 12 this year, rogue employees and hackers were the major causes according to figures released this week by the Identity Theft Resource Center.

Theft by employees and hacking were each responsible for 18% of all incidents, an increase of around 10% compared with the same period in 2008.

The Center also found that 14% of breaches so far this year were due to data contained on lost or stolen digital media, such as a laptop or USB thumb drives.  That’s still a significant number – and all the more reason to consider using a secure USB flash drive solution, such as our Cruzer Enterprise range.