BotNet News

A data breach is an incident in which confidential, private or protected information is exposed to someone that isn’t authorized to see it. This can happen due to both accidental events (like an employee emailing confidential data to the wrong person) or malicious acts by outside attackers (who may be either lone operators or part of organized criminal rings).

There are hard and soft costs associated with data breaches. Hard costs include monetary losses and business disruptions such as lost revenue or lost opportunities. Soft costs include reputational damage and lost trust.

The main reason attackers target businesses is for financial gain. This can be from ransomware attacks where an organisation is forced to pay a sum of money to regain access to their data, or the theft of credit card numbers and bank accounts which directly drain funds. Attackers can also break into company offices and steal paper documents and physical hard drives containing sensitive information, or place skimming devices on point-of-sale credit card readers.

Once the attack has been detected, an organisation must investigate to identify the scale and scope of the breach and how it occurred. This can involve forensics, identifying any malware, and restoring impacted systems using clean backups. In addition, organisations must notify affected individuals of the breach, and this can be time-sensitive depending on the nature of the breach and risk to the individual.

If a consumer’s personal information is exposed, they can suffer distress, financial loss and identity theft. Moreover, consumers are increasingly aware of the value of their personal information and will choose to buy goods or services from companies that can demonstrate they take security seriously.