Data breaches cost companies an average of $4 million, up from 29 percent in 2013, according to a new report from IBM and the Ponemon Institute. The research found that hacks continue to grow in volume and sophistication. There were 64 percent more incidents reported in 2015 than in 2014.

Canadian company VerticalScope has been hacked into, and 45 million records from its network of more than 1,100 websites and forums has been stolen. The company operates a number of website including: AutoGuide.com, Motorcycle.com, Boat.com, TennisUniverse.com, PetGuide.com and Mothering.com.The company is still investigating the break in but said that the data breach likely involves usernames, user IDs, email addresses, and encrypted passwords.

IBM commissioned a study from the think tank the Ponemon Institute, which found that the cost of data breaches at Australian companies had dropped 6.6 percent. IBM Australia is suggesting that the study may not have been complete because the research failed to look at businesses in the healthcare sector in Australia, a target among hackers.

The University of Illinois experienced an email outage on Wednesday after a routine software check accidentally shut down its email and phone system. The redundant backup also failed. The outage lasted about half an hour before the campus network was back up and running again.

Japanese travel agency JTB Corp. has suffered a major data breach which exposed the personal information of roughly 8 million customers. The leak sprung after an employee of the company fell victim to an email phishing attack and opened an attachment that installed malware on his or her work computer. This gave the hacker access to the companies files and customer list.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell revealed that he sent insecure emails while working at the State Department as a way to create more immediate communication with people both inside and outside of the department. He revealed this during a keynote address at Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit. Powell said that he had two computers on his desk, and official secure computer that was hard to use, as well as a laptop with a phone line that he used for his private account.

Verizon has patched a flaw in its Verizon.net messaging system that allowed hackers to break into the email settings of users and forward email to any email account. Randy Westergren, a senior software developer with XDA Developers, discovered the exposure which affected about 7 million FiOS subscribers. Westergren reported the vulnerability to Verizon on April 14 and it was fixed on May 12. The company revealed the news to the public this week.

Hackers with links to the Russian government broke into the Democratic National Committee's servers and email system last summer. Two separate groups gained illegal access to the servers last year, one of which was able to get in as recently as this April. An investigation into the exposure connected one of the groups to a similar attack on the official State Department email servers last year.

Hackers have tried to steal more than $3 billion from companies around the globe by pretending to be executives of the companies they try to steal from, according to the FBI. These so-called CEO spam scams have increased 50 percent over the past 10 months. More than 22,000 businesses have been hit by the scam.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has warned local business owners to beware of emails that claim to come from her office. A number of small business owners have received emails and social media messages claiming that the AG has received complaints about their companies. The scam encourages recipients to send money or download malware.