Just when you thought the nonstop wave of data breaches had slowed down, a flurry of activity made recent news. In Pennsylvania, a hack of the Department of Education’s website compromised the information of 360,000 teachers and staffers. The city of Atlanta suffered a ransomware attack that took down municipal services and even caused Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the world’s busiest, to turn off its Wi-Fi.

Although it wasn’t technically a breach, 50 million Facebook users had their information accessed without consent in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election.

Last week, Equifax, one of the three largest consumer credit reporting agencies in the United States, reported that a massive data breach exposed the Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and other private information of more than 143 million US residents.

In the latest cybercrime twist, the IRS recently reported that hackers are now targeting tax preparers by employing email phishing scams and hacking attempts. Why? For the same reason behind every breach: cybercriminals want to steal Social Security numbers, personal information, and financial data.

Last week, LinkedIn made a surprising announcement: data from a security breach that occurred at the social networking company in 2012 just now became available online — four years after that fact! Luckily, the only data revealed was member email addresses, passwords, and LinkedIn member IDs. But that information is often enough to execute the kinds of “social engineering” scams so prevalent today.

Another week, another data breach — at least that’s what it felt like when the federal government revealed last week that the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security had employee information hacked.

Initial reports indicate that no sensitive information was stolen; apparently, the majority of the data breach concerned email addresses, phone numbers, and job titles for nearly 30,000 federal employees.

In the early days of email, excited computer users embraced the new technology because of the freedom it entailed. You could say anything you wanted about any topic, at any length, and fire away. But once the world realized that all those messages would live on in perpetuity, the need to protect the security and integrity of this most basic of all online communications became more prevalent.

Picture this: you’ve been stuck in IT limbo for years. Relying on friends to get new technology up and running. Tasking a key employee with maintaining systems (in addition to fulfilling their other responsibilities). Perhaps every once in a while you even bring in an IT professional to diagnose problems and resolve major issues.

Last month, we wrote about an FBI report that warned businesses to look out for an email scheme targeting executives and financial employees. But in recent weeks, these efforts, dubbed “spearfishing” by security experts, have intensified. CMIT Solutions was even called in to deal with several instances of the scam — one of which ended up costing a business tens of thousands of dollars before it was properly identified.