Around 183 million private records were breached around the world during the last quarter, according to a report by the security company SafeNet.
The results bring the total breaches of personal and financial records for this year to 550 million, with almost half of attacks this quarter directed at the financial industry.
Tsion Gonen, chief strategy officer at SafeNet, said: "Consumers’ heads must be spinning as criminals are easily getting access to their credit card, banking and personal information at every turn.
"Companies should assume a breach and plan accordingly. They need to implement technologies and programmes that minimise the impact of a breach on top of the traditional prevention."
320 breaches were reported worldwide between July and September, a 25% rise compared to the same period in 2013.
Malicious outsiders accounted for 97% of the records taken, with accidental loss and state-sponsored attacks accounting for around 1% each. Half of the records were taken through account access, while financial access accounted for a third of the records stolen.
"Customers have been very tolerant of these breaches, because they feel that this access can be corrected by someone else, like a bank replacing a stolen credit card," Gonen added.
"However, this new surge of online identity breaches is much more serious for individuals. Once your personal photos or private messages have been accessed and leaked online, there’s no fixing that."
