What You Need to Know About Data Breach
About Data Breach
Whether hackers stole information from your servers or it was inadvertently exposed on your website, you need to move quickly to protect the people whose data was compromised. This is important not only for legal reasons, but also to regain their trust and ensure that the breach won’t happen again.
The primary motivation for most breaches is financial gain, whether it’s hackers stealing credit card and bank account numbers or selling personal details on the dark web. Criminals use this data to drain accounts and steal identities, leaving victims with elevated risk of identity theft for years afterward. Companies whose systems are breached face financial harm from lost revenue, regulatory fines and lawsuits.
If your business handles sensitive financial information (such as credit card numbers) or personal details that are subject to protection under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, like a patient’s name, birth date and Social Security number, you must follow strict rules for protecting those records. The penalties for violating those rules can be severe.
If a hacker used stolen credentials, such as passwords or login information, to gain access to your systems, the hackers may have exploited weaknesses in your security system or tricked your employees into revealing their own credentials through social engineering attacks. This is often called “phishing” and it’s the most common attack vector in data breaches. It can be accomplished through emails, text messages or fake websites and it’s a key component of many cybercrimes.