Contemporary research on the financial impact of data breach events has focused on costs to businesses and institutions, but largely ignored their effect on the consumers whose personally identifiable information (PII) is compromised. Javelin Strategy & Research (@JavelinStrategy) released the firm’s first ever “2013 Data Breach Fraud Impact Report: Mitigating a Rapidly Emerging Driver of Fraud,” which demonstrates the real connection between data breach and consumer fraud. Data breach victimization has been increasingly correlated with fraud over the past three years with over 50% of fraud victims in 2012 were also data breach victims. The Open Security Foundation reports an all-time high of 1,611 breaches in 2012, a 48% increase over 2011.