Hackers who caused data breaches in the name of a social or political cause were responsible for 58 per cent of stolen data in 2011, a new report shows.

"The new trend contrasts sharply with the data-breach pattern of past several years, during which the majority of attacks were carried out by cybercriminals whose primary motivation was financial gain," said a statement announcing the release of the "Verizon 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report" this week.

"Hacktivist" groups such as LulzSec made headlines in 2011 for claiming attacks on high-profile targets such as Sony and Nintendo. Such groups often claimed their motivation was to demonstrate the lack of security employed by the companies they attacked.

Another major new trend outlined in the report was a huge increase in the theft of information that could be used to identify a person. Personal information was included in 95 per cent of records lost in 2011, but just one per cent the year before. One massive attack on Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity service in 2011, for example, compromised 100 million user accounts and resulted in the theft of information such as names, birthdates and email addresses.

The fifth annual Data Breach Investigations Report covered 855 data breaches 174 million stolen records. It was compiled from data collected during forensic investigations that Verizon was hired and paid to conduct through its Terremark subsidiary, which provides IT security services. It also cited data from the United States Secret Service, the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit, the Australian Federal Police, the Irish Reporting & Information Security Service and the Police Central e-Crime Unit of the London Metropolitan Police.

Some other findings of the report were that: