What is data breach and what are the prominent data breach protection regulations and laws?
Data breach is a security incident in which information is taken from a system without the knowledge or authorization of the owner of the system. Furthermore, the stolen data may involve sensitive, critical, proprietary or confidential organizational information likewise customer data, trade secrets, and credit card number. It exposes confidential, critical, sensitive and protected information to an unauthorized person. The data breach may have detrimental consequence to an organization in the form of damage to its reputation due to trust issues.
Compliance and regulatory requirements may come to the surface when data breach occurs and may gravely affect a company if sensitive customer data is stolen and lost. Besides, governments, business and individuals may experience huge setbacks due to the exposure of sensitive and critical information. Cybercriminals may exfiltrate data from individuals and organizations through the Internet, online services, text messages, emails, and Bluetooth.
Protection techniques against data breach attacks include the following;
- Proper systems and networks patching and upgrading
- Security awareness training
- Implement security controls such as data loss protection (DLP)
- Create contingency plan
- Secure all devices
- Protect accounts
- Strong encryption algorithms
- Enforcing BYOD (Bring your own device) security policy
- Do not open emails and attachments from unfamiliar senders
- Use strong credentials
- Multifactor authentication (MFA)
Most of the time, data breaches occur due to vulnerabilities in technologies and user behavior towards to cybersecurity. Moreover, it may occur due to accidental and malicious insider actions, lost or stolen devices that host data, and malicious cybercriminals. The criminals may use phishing, malware, brute-force attacks to stage the data breach incident.