What is a Data Breach?
Data Breach is when a threat actor gains unauthorized access to information, usually as part of a cyber attack. This sensitive information can include financial information, confidential business data, personal data, or even company trade secrets. Once breached, this information can be used for a variety of malicious purposes including fraud and identity theft.
Hackers and other threat actors can gain unauthorized access to sensitive information in a number of ways, such as social engineering attacks, directly exploiting vulnerabilities in system infrastructure or employee log-in credentials, purchasing malware that will give them entry, or using stolen logins and passwords from previous breaches. Once they have entered the compromised system, they can take a variety of actions including exfiltrating the data for sale on the black market or dark web, selling it to other businesses for profit, or holding the information for ransom.
Once a data breach occurs, it’s important to put in place an incident response plan. This will require identifying the key players in your organization that can help identify and contain the breach, such as your internal IT team and external forensic experts. Next, you’ll need to put together a team that will document the damage and take steps to remediate it, such as taking affected machines offline immediately. You’ll also need to notify people of the breach and consider whether they should contact their financial institutions for assistance, such as requesting fraud alerts or credit freezes.