What is a Data Breach?
A data breach occurs when unauthorized parties gain access to confidential and sensitive information such as financial (credit card numbers, healthcare records, personal identification), business (customer lists, intellectual property) or personal (email addresses, phone numbers, social media passwords) data. A data breach can be caused by an insider – from angry or laid-off employees who want to hurt a company or cause damage to their reputation, to greedy employees seeking monetary gain. It can also be caused by malicious outsiders – hackers who exploit software vulnerabilities, or who use compromised Internet of Things (IoT) devices to hack into systems.
Criminals who steal data from a breach can sell it on the dark web or use it to commit fraud in your name. People whose information has been revealed in a breach are at elevated risk of identity theft for years to come.
Often, the root causes of a data breach can be traced back to human error or flaws in a company’s infrastructure. For example, a hospital employee who copies the personal details of patients on to a CD publishes that online without noticing. This is a data breach because the hospital did not protect that information appropriately either technically or organizationally.
A data breach can cost a business dearly both in terms of lost revenue and the costs associated with detecting and escalating the breach. Post-breach expenses like fines, legal fees, providing free credit monitoring and freezes to consumers and other expenditures can be significant.