What is a Data Breach?
The term Data Breach refers to any incident in which private information or confidential data is stolen from an organization, often without the company’s knowledge. The damage can be both immediate and long-term. In the short run, a breach may result in financial losses from investigative expenses, remediation costs and compensating individuals who have had their information compromised. In the long run, a breach can hurt a company’s reputation and brand, leading to lost business and diminished trust from customers. In addition, regulatory penalties and fines can be steep, including those related to GDPR and CCPA.
Criminals steal sensitive information for various reasons: for profit (e.g., selling identities on the dark web), for political or cyber warfare purposes, corporate espionage, hacktivism, or simply to cause damage. To gain access to information, hackers use techniques such as phishing, malware, social engineering, or exploiting unpatched software vulnerabilities.
PII is usually the target of attacks because it can be used for identity theft. Other targets include financial information (e.g., credit card numbers), healthcare records and intellectual property. In some cases, attackers will attempt to sell data directly to victims or to other companies for a quid pro quo or extortion payment.
In many cases, people who have had their personal information exposed will be notified by the company they were affected by. They will also need to check with their credit monitoring agency, review websites where their personal information was improperly posted and contact search engines to ensure that they are removing the data from their servers.