What Is Data Breach And How To Avoid Them

 If you regularly follow digital security news, you've probably heard people talk about major companies experiencing data breaches. And you may be concerned about how this violation may affect you as a user. So what is a data breach and how to avoid or protect yourself from future breaches.

What is Data Breach

Data Breach is an incident that exposes confidential or protected information. A data breach may involve lost or stolen social security numbers, bank or credit card account numbers, personal health information, passwords, or emails. Data breaches can be intentional or unintentional.

Cybercriminals can hack databases of companies where you share your personal information. Or an employee at that company may accidentally expose your information on the Internet. After all, criminals can access your key personal details and profit from them at your expense.

The difference between Security Incident, Security Breach, Data Breach

The general term for a company or organization that is hacked or digitally attacked is a security incident. This covers a wide range of issues such as malware infections, phishing attempts, distributed denial of service attacks, and employees losing or having their equipment stolen.

Security incidents may not result in an organization's security being compromised. If the attacker succeeds in compromising the security of the organization, it is called a security breach.

While data breach is a particular type of security breach. This is where attackers manage to access data they shouldn't be able to access. Typically, an attacker will achieve a security breach, and then steal data resulting in a data breach.

But there can also be other types of data breaches. For example, an organization could accidentally leave sensitive data in an unsafe location. If people can access data they shouldn't be able to, it's a data breach.

Examples of Some Famous Data Breach?

One of the biggest data breaches in recent years came to light in 2018. Hackers attacked Facebook and were able to steal information about 30 million users. They carry out attacks through the Facebook developer API (application programming interface) and can obtain information about users such as their name, gender and hometown.

Another high-profile data breach occurred with Equifax in 2017. Equifax is a large credit reporting company and stores data on a large number of Americans. Hackers were able to gain early access to corporate systems via a consumer complaints web portal using a well-known vulnerability.

Then they use the web portal to access other parts of the network. They found usernames and passwords stored in plain text (which is a big security blunder). They then use these passwords to steal data such as names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth. In total, the violations have the potential to affect up to 145 million people.

Banking and credit card company Capital One also suffered a data breach in 2019. Hackers were able to steal the names, addresses, credit scores and Social Security numbers of more than 100 million customers. The company has misconfigured the web application firewall, and a hacker can exploit this to gain access to the system. The hacker is a software engineer who previously worked for Capital One's web hosting company Amazon Web Services.

How Does Data Breach Happen?

There are many ways that result in data breaches. According to a report by Kastle Systems, the most common cause of data breaches is hacking, followed by poor security. Hackers used malware in almost 50 percent of data breaches. They used social engineering in a quarter of the violations.

Hackers can introduce malware to target computers through techniques such as email spam. The email will trick users into clicking on a link that downloads malware onto their device. Another way to hack the system is through social engineering attacks such as phishing. This is where hackers create fake websites and trick users into entering their usernames and passwords into the site.

The hacker can then copy those usernames and passwords and use them to access secure systems. Occasionally, affected organizations make mistakes that result in data breaches. For example, an employee could lose their company computer or have it stolen. If cybercriminals get their hands on the computer, they can use it to access corporate systems.

Or, as seen in the Equifax case, the organization may have poor security practices such as storing passwords in the plan text. That makes it easier for hackers to steal data.

Affected by Data Breach? Here's What To Do

With so many companies experiencing data breaches, you are likely to be affected. Therefore, a great resource to find out if your information has been part of a breach is the HaveIBeenPwned.com website. You can enter your email address into this site to see if you have been affected by a data breach.

If your information is involved in a data breach, don't panic. First, check which site is responsible for the breach. Now, go to each of those sites and change your password immediately. This should be enough to protect you in most cases. Sometimes, you have to take more serious action, if a breach has affected highly sensitive data such as your Social Security number or bank account has been compromised.

How to Protect Against Data Breach?

To protect yourself from a data breach, there are a number of steps you can take:

* Use a strong password. Your password should ideally be a mix of numbers, letters and special characters. Also, you may not reuse the same password for multiple sites or logins. Finally, never share your password with anyone.

* Use HTTPS when browsing the web. Using HTTPS ensures you connect to the site securely. This makes it harder for hackers to intercept your data.

* Watch out for spam, phishing and other suspicious communications. Be careful what you click on, especially if you receive unsolicited e-mail messages or browse little-known websites.

* Always update your software. Updating the operating system and other software can be a defense of your security. Because it is a vital way to protect yourself from attack. When security vulnerabilities are disclosed, companies will update their software to protect against the vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

With this information, you can be prepared for a possible data breach. And by following the steps outlined above, you can make it less likely that you will become a victim of a data breach in the future. If you work with other people's data from your job, you also have to consider how hackers can target your organization.

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That's all the information this time. Look forward to other interesting information and don't forget to share this information with your friends. Thank you…

Resa Risyan

Just an ordinary person who wants to share a little knowledge, hopefully the knowledge I provide can be useful for all of us. Keep in mind! Useful knowledge is an investment in the afterlife.