Make no mistake about it, some of the most exciting rollercoaster moments of Dark Reading's decade of coverage came as a result of the very large-scale and extremely embarrassing breaches that have plagued organizations across the globe.

To be sure, data breaches come in all shapes and sizes, but perhaps none have been quite as impactful as the mega breach. Typically hitting government, retail and financial organizations, these massive breaches boggle the mind in their scale, with tens or even hundreds of millions of records stolen at once and wide-ranging financial implications coming in the fallout.

Here are some of the biggest to break since we've started covering them.