Technologies

What is a Data Breach?

Definition: A data breach is a security incident that results in the transfer of sensitive, protected or confidential information onto an information system that is not authorized to store or process that information. Other terms are unintentional information disclosure, data leak, information leakage, and data spill.

Explanation

Data Breach explained

A data breach occurs when an organization's data is subjected to a security incident that results in a breach of confidentiality, availability, or integrity. Any type of data may be leaked in this way, either accidentally or maliciously. This could include:

  • Financial information such as credit card and debit card details,
  • Bank account information,
  • Personal health information (PHI),
  • Personally identifiable information (PII),
  • Corporate trade secrets
  • Intellectual property

It can also include overexposed and vulnerable unstructured data – files, documents, and sensitive information.

Data breaches can be very expensive for both businesses and individuals, both in terms of direct costs (remediation, investigation, etc.) and indirect costs (reputational damages, emotional damage, providing cyber security to victims of compromised data, etc).

A cyber attack is not necessarily the same as a data breach - a cyber attack is the electronic theft of data or confidential information, whereas a data breach is any unauthorized disclosure of confidential or protected details.

The most important aspect of preventing a data breach is effectively protecting customer information and data. Data can be encrypted "at rest," when it is being stored, or "in transit," when it is being transmitted to another location.

Solutions

Solutions

Blog posts

Blog posts

Related products

Related products

Contact us

We look forward to answering your questions.

How can we help you?

Talk to one of our specialists and find out how Utimaco can support you today.
You have selected two different types of downloads, so you need to submit different forms which you can select via the two tabs.

Your download request(s):

    By submitting below form you will receive links for your selected downloads.

    Your download request(s):

      For this type of documents, your e-mail address needs to be verified. You will receive the links for your selected downloads via e-mail after submitting below form.

      About Utimaco's Downloads

      Visit our Downloads section and select from resources such as brochures, data sheets, white papers and much more. You can view and save almost all of them directly (by clicking the download button).

      For some documents, your e-mail address needs to be verified. The button contains an e-mail icon.

      Download via e-mail

       

      A click on such a button opens an online form which we kindly ask you to fill and submit. You can collect several downloads of this type and receive the links via e-mail by simply submitting one form for all of them. Your current collection is empty.