Data breaches can be far more than merely a cause of discomfort; they can alter the trajectory of your life. When sensitive information is revealed, it can cause major problems for businesses, governments, and individuals alike. Hackers can access you whether you are offline or online by using the internet, Bluetooth, text messaging, or the online services you use.
A minor flaw can lead to a large data breach if not addressed properly.
And because many people are ignorant of how common modern security risks operate, they do not pay enough attention to it.
So in theis article we’ll go over data breaches, how they can affect you and how to prevent them.
What is Data Breach?
A “data breach” occurs when information is removed or stolen from a system without the owner’s knowledge or consent. A data breach can happen to a big or small business. Private, proprietary, or sensitive information—such as credit card numbers, customer information, trade secrets, or information related to national security—may be included in stolen data.
Causes of Data Breach
The following are typical reasons why information breaches from companies occur.
#1. Insider Disclosures
Disgruntled workers, former workers who still have access credentials to private networks and business partners are examples of insider risks. Retaliation, money, or information with a high commercial value may be their motivators.
#2. Payment Fraud
Typical situations include credit card breaches leading to fraud, phoney refunds, and triangulation frauds. When thieves create fake internet storefronts at low prices and use the credit card information they steal to purchase at actual establishments.
#3. Loss or Theft
Organizations keep sensitive data on various gadgets, including desktop computers, servers, thumb drives, laptops, and portable hard drives. Any of these devices could be inadvertently misplaced by organisation personnel or physically taken by an attacker, leading to a breach.
#4. Unintended Disclosure
Many data breaches result from the inadvertent disclosure of private information rather than from an attack. IT workers may inadvertently expose a critical internal server to the Internet, or employees may access sensitive data and save it to an insecure location.
What Can Attackers Do with Stolen Data?
Attackers frequently target high-value data, such as personally identifiable information (PII) or business data, which they can either sell for a profit or exploit to harm the target or organization.
Once they obtain the data, the consequences might be quite harmful. Organizations that experience a data breach may lose confidential company information or sensitive financial data, but they may also incur penalties, irreversible financial losses, and reputational harm. A government agency breach could expose sensitive and confidential data about military activities, the country’s infrastructure, and political dealings to foreign agencies. This could represent a threat to the government and its people.
People who experience a breach may lose their personal information, including Social Security numbers, bank account information, and medical records. Equipped with this data, a cybercriminal may pilfer the person’s identity, obtain entry to their social media accounts, wreak havoc on their credit score, make purchases on their credit cards, and even fabricate new personas for potential future assaults.
The companies affected by the most significant data breaches experienced long-term consequences. Examples of these data breaches are as follows:
#1. Yahoo
The massive internet company Yahoo disclosed two data breaches in 2013 and 2014 in 2016. The attacks, which allegedly involved state-sponsored hackers who stole personal information like names, email addresses, and unencrypted security questions and answers, may have affected up to 1.5 billion Yahoo accounts.
#2. Equifax
Between May and June 2017, a data breach at the financial services company Equifax affected over 153 million people in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition to almost 200,000 credit card numbers, it revealed the personal information of over 200,000 clients, including names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and driver’s license numbers.
#3. Twitter
Following discovering a problem that revealed user passwords, Twitter asked its 330 million users to update and replace them in 2018. This resulted from an issue with Twitter’s hashing algorithm, which encrypts user passwords. Although the social networking site stated that it had discovered and resolved the problem, this is a prime illustration of a potential vulnerability exploit.
In May 2020, Twitter may have experienced a security breach that impacted companies utilizing its analytics and advertising services. Twitter said that it was “possible” that some users’ phone numbers, email addresses, and the last four digits of their credit card information may have been accessible due to a caching problem.
#4. First American Financial Company
An attack on the insurance company First American Financial in May 2019 exposed over 885 million private documents. The attack led to the digitization and public availability of files that included Social Security numbers, photographs of driver’s licenses, bank account numbers and statements, mortgage details, tax records, and wire transfer receipts in 2003.
#5. Facebook
A server holding phone numbers connected to the account IDs of over 419 million Facebook users was made public in September 2019. Since the server was not password-protected, anybody could locate, log in to, and search the database. Three months later, hackers discovered a database that held the names, phone numbers, and user IDs of almost 300 million Facebook members.
Data Breach Response Guide for Business
You recently discovered a data breach at your company. If someone may have revealed your personal information, what should you do, and who should you contact? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offers the following advice, which can assist you in making wise selections, even though the responses differ depending on the circumstances.
#1. Safeguard Your Activities
Act swiftly to protect your systems and address any weaknesses that might have led to the hack. Multiple data breaches are the only thing worse than one data breach. Take action to prevent a recurrence.
#2. Protect any Physical Locations that Might be Connected to the Incident
If necessary, lock them and modify the access codes. Ask your law enforcement and forensics specialists when it’s OK to start regular operations again. Immediately assemble your breach response team to stop further data loss.
#3. Put together a Group of Professionals to Carry out a thorough Breach Response
These could include forensics, legal, information security, technology, operations, human resources, communications, investor relations, and management, depending on the size and type of your business.
#4. Find a Team for Data Forensics
To assist you in identifying the origin and extent of the breach, think about working with independent forensic investigators. They will take forensic pictures of the compromised systems, gather and examine proof, and provide a remediation plan.
#5. Speak with a lawyer
Consult your legal representative. After that, consider working with independent legal counsel specialising in data security and privacy. They can provide details on local, state, and federal laws that a breach might violate.
#6. Put an End to Further Data Loss
Take offline all impacted equipment as soon as possible, but don’t switch off any devices until the forensic specialists come. Keep a close eye on all entry and departure points, particularly where the breach occurred. Replace impacted machines online with clean ones. Update the passwords and login information for authorised users as well.
Typical attack routes for data breaches
Malicious actors can execute data breaches through various attack routes or techniques. Among the most typical are:
#1. Credentials that have Been Compromised or Stolen
19% of data breaches are caused by stolen or compromised credentials, according to Cost of a Data Breach 2022. This makes them the most frequent first attack vector. Hackers can use brute force assaults, purchase stolen credentials on the dark web, or use social engineering techniques to fool employees into disclosing credentials to steal or compromise credentials.
At 16 percent of data breaches, phishing is the most frequent form of social engineering assault and the second most common attack vector. Phishing scams deceive users into revealing credentials or downloading malware by sending fake emails, texts, social media posts, or websites.
#3. Ransomware
An organisation needs 326 days on average to find and contain a ransomware compromise, according to Cost of a Data Compromise 2022. This is especially concerning considering ransomware’s average time to execution decreased from more than 60 days in 2019 to just 3.85 days in 2021, per the X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2023. Without accounting for ransom payments, which can total tens of millions of dollars, the average cost of a ransomware-related breach is USD 4.54 million.
#4. Weaknesses in the System
Cybercriminals can access a target network by taking advantage of IT assets’ flaws, like websites, operating systems, endpoints, and widely used programs like Microsoft Office or web browsers. One frequent malware used in data breaches is spyware, which gathers sensitive data, including a victim’s keystrokes, and sends it back to a command and control server run by the hackers.
#5. SQL Injection
SQL injection is a different approach to directly penetrating target systems by exploiting flaws in the Structured Query Language (SQL) databases of unprotected websites. When hackers insert malicious code into the website’s search area, the database returns private information like credit card numbers or client details.
#6. Both Human Error and IT Malfunctions
Hackers might use such blunders when workers make mistakes to obtain private data. For instance, in 15% of breaches, cloud misconfigurations were the initial attack vector, according to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach 2022 research. Workers may also unintentionally give network users excessive data access privileges, misplace devices that contain important information saved on them, or store data in unsafe locations, all of which might expose data to attackers. Cybercriminals may enter critical databases by taking advantage of IT faults, such as brief system outages.
#7. Errors in Site Security or Physical Protection
Attackers may break into business offices to take paper documents and physical hard drives, take advantage of employees’ work or personal devices to access sensitive data or install skimming devices on credit and debit card readers to obtain payment card information from people.
Data breach Prevention and mitigation
Regular vulnerability assessments, planned backups, data encryption in transit and at rest, appropriate database settings, prompt system and software deployment, and other standard security procedures can help avoid data breaches and lessen their impact when they occur. But to effectively avoid data breaches and lessen their harm, organisations today may deploy more specialised data security policies, technologies, and best practices.
#1. Plans for Responding to Incidents
A company’s incident response plan (IRP), which serves as a guide for identifying, stopping, and eliminating cyber threats, is one of the best tools for lessening the effects of a data breach. The average cost of a data breach for organisations with formal incident response teams and regularly tested incident response plans is USD 3.26 million, which is USD 2.66 million less than the average cost of a data breach for organisations without these resources, according to the Cost of a Data Breach 2022 report.
#2. Automation and Artificial Intelligence
Organizations using high levels of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) for threat detection and response had an average data breach cost of 55.3 percent cheaper than those using lesser levels of similar technologies, according to the Cost of a Data Breach 2022 report. Technologies that use AI and advanced analytics to identify threats early—even before they result in data breaches—and provide automation capabilities that enable a quicker, more affordable response are SOAR (security orchestration, automation, and response), UEBA (user and entity behaviour analytics), EDR (endpoint detection and response), and XDR (extended detection and response).
#3. Employee Education
A company’s risk of a data breach can be decreased by teaching staff members how to spot and prevent social engineering and phishing assaults, which are the main causes of breaches. Additionally, educating staff members on appropriate data handling practices can aid in preventing unintentional data breaches and leaks.
#4. A Security Strategy Based on Zero Trust
Whether a person or entity is inside or outside the network, a zero-trust security solution never trusts and constantly checks them. To be more precise, zero trust means
What happens if you have a data breach?
An event that results in the disclosure of private or protected data is called a data breach. Your Social Security number, bank account or credit card number, passwords, email accounts, and personal health information could all be lost or stolen in these hacks. A data leak may occur accidentally or on purpose.
What is the difference between a cyber attack and a data breach?
Target: Computers, servers, mobile devices, and other internet-connected systems, networks, and devices are susceptible to cyberattacks. Conversely, data breaches typically target specific companies or organisations that store private information.
What should I do after a data breach?
- Modify your passwords.
- Enrol in two-factor verification.
- Look for updates from the business.
- Keep an eye on your finances and review your credit reports.
- Think about services that defend against identity theft.
- Put your credit on hold.
- Check out IdentityTheft.gov.
How do I know if I have had a data breach?
Putting your email address into various data breach websites that monitor breaches and confirm them as accurate is one of the best methods to determine whether you have been hacked. The websites will notify you if there are any known data breaches involving your email address and related passwords.
Can I sue if my data is breached?
If you can demonstrate that the data breach caused you to experience quantifiable harm—such as identity theft or financial loss—you may be entitled to file a lawsuit. Businesses may file a lawsuit if a breach causes financial injury or results in the loss of intellectual property.
Can I claim against a data breach?
Numerous courts have ruled that victims of data breaches may file a lawsuit even if they haven’t yet seen any indications of identity fraud. This is predicated on the knowledge that those whose information was taken will likely be more vulnerable to identity theft.
How long do you go to jail for a data breach?
Criminal consequences for HIPAA violations might be up to ten years in prison in some circumstances. For specific data breaches, the CCPA offers a private right of action with potential statutory damages of up to USD 750 per consumer per event.
Conclusion
Data breaches can alter your life much more than just a momentary fear. Sensitive information breaches can cause severe problems for individuals, businesses, and governments. Hackers can access you through Bluetooth, the internet, text messages, and the online services you use, whether you are online or not. Many people don’t pay enough attention to it since they don’t know how common modern security dangers operate.
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