I am not sure that it can be called a phenomenon yet, but recently we are witnessing a growing number of breaches that are either detected after a very long time or it takes a very long time to determine its exact scope.

• Two years later, IRS employees charged with snooping at tax records

According to an article in Computerworld , five federal workers at an Internal Revenue Service office in California have been charged with computer fraud for illegally accessing the confidential records of taxpayers. The five IRS workers accessed and viewed the records of up to 13 different people early in 2006.

• It will take weeks to analyze the breach at UMass

CBS Springfield reports that hackers breached the computer system used by UMass Amherst's Health Services, potentially gaining access to thousands of medical records.

Campus officials say it will be weeks before they are completely sure what information, if any, was taken off the computers. They say the entire campus system is being looked at to avoid future breaches.

It's good to know that not all organization are clueless when it comes to activity monitoring. At least the internal systems at the IRS are monitored . Hopefully, they were able to detect it in real time and now, two years later they are only pressing charges.