What is Data Breach?

A data breach is a cybersecurity term that describes unauthorized access to private or sensitive information by malicious individuals. Here, cybercriminals can compromise a network and obtain sensitive data by copying, sharing, or deleting your important files. This can expose your personal and financial details (e.g. credit card numbers, passwords, software codes, and other details). 

 

So, how can your company Common forms of data breaches include:

  • Cyberattacks – This popular form of a data breach is the most difficult to prevent. Hackers attack your network through phishing, social engineering, skimming, or malware attacks.
Read: Sneaky Ways Cybercriminals Attack Your Network And What You Can Do To Prevent It NOW
  • Employee data theft – Employees might steal valuable company data for various reasons. The healthcare sector specifically struggles with employee data theft, especially as perpetrators stealing patient identities. Other employees steal company data for financial reasons.
Read: Amazon Employee Responsible For User Data Breach
  • Human error – Human error is another common form of a data breach, accounting for 90 percent of data breaches. As systems continually become complicated, the potential for human error also increases.
Read: Don’t Let Your Employees Become Your Biggest Vulnerability
  • Loss of property – Another common type of data breach is losing properties with sensitive information. This doesn’t fall under human error as it results from avoidable carelessness.
Read: New Healthcare Breach Blamed On Stolen Laptop

 

How can your company recover after a data breach?

https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/cybersecurity-challenges-for-small-midsize-businesses.html

Data breaches threaten all organizations, regardless of the security defenses in place or company size. The resulting effects of a data breach are detrimental to a company. While it is important to protect and prevent your business from a data breach, finding a recovery plan following a breach is even more important. Below are the steps to guide you when recovering from a breach.

  1. Contain the Breach

You should find ways of containing the breach immediately. Begin by isolating the affected systems to prevent them from spreading to your entire network. This includes disconnecting any breached accounts and shutting down targeted departments. Once contained, you should then work on eliminating the threat.

  1. Assess Degree of Damage

Having contained and eliminated the attack, you should then investigate the extent of the damage. Identifying how the attack occurred is important to prevent future attacks using the same tactics. You should also thoroughly assess the affected systems to uncover any malware left by the hacker.

  1. Inform the Affected

By investigating the data breach, you can identify those affected by the data breach in the organization. You should notify the relevant authorities, individuals, and third-party organizations affected. Inform both internal and external affected persons about the type of data breach that occurred, records affected, possible losses incurred, plans for mitigating the damage, and how you intend to prevent a recurrence attack.

  1. Conduct a Security Audit

A security audit is important to assess the status of your security systems and prepare for future recovery plans. With or without a data breach, regular security audits are important.

  1. Improve Your Cybersecurity Systems

Following recovery, you should update your security by adopting various prevention measures. The best chance of preventing future data breaches is by following appropriate security protocols.

One way you can do this is by scheduling your FREE Security Assessment. By doing this we’ll be able to give you a report of findings that will not only reveal if your data and computer network really are properly backed up and secured, but also if there is anything you need to do now to prevent a major network outage, data loss, hacker attack or other expensive, data-erasing disaster. Plus, we can almost always show you how to save a little (or a LOT) on hardware and software by switching to more efficient cloud-computing solutions.