The good news for universities is that the number of data breaches for the year, 48, and the number of records compromised, 478,490, is the lowest it has been since 2005. And while VCU may have been top dog in 2011, its data breach didn't even make the threat company's top 10 list.

As encouraging as the breach numbers from 2011 were, one year does not make a trend. In fact, early signs for 2012 indicate 2011 may have been an anomaly in this data set, with Arizona State, which saw 300,000 records compromised in January, already reporting what would be the fourth highest breach since 2005.

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