Data Breach

Data breach is an incident where sensitive, protected or confidential data has been taken from a system by an individual unauthorized to do so, without the knowledge of the system’s operator/owner.

Data breach definition

Data breach is an incident where sensitive, protected or confidential data has been taken from a system by an individual unauthorized to do so, without the knowledge of the system’s operator/owner. Data breaches are usually hacking or malware attacks.

The damage may involve financial loss and can degrade the company’s name.

Data breach methods

– Insider leak where a trusted individual with access privileges steals the data.

– Payment card fraud where the card gets stolen by using physical skimming devices.

– Loss or theft where portable drives, laptops, office computers, files get lost or stolen.

– Unintended disclosure where sensitive data gets exposed through mistakes or negligence.

– Unknown where the actual breach method is unknown or undisclosed

Phases of a data breach

1. Research: The attacker looks for weaknesses in the target: employees, systems, networks,

2. Attack: network-based attack (through infrastructure) or a social attack (through network).

3. Exfiltrate: the attacker extracts the data he/she needs from the company’s infrastructure and uses it for either blackmail or black propaganda

Steps of precaution against dana breach

– Patching systems and networks accordingly

– Educating and enforcing the employees

– Implementing security measures

– Createing contingencies