What is a data breach?

Data breach defined

A data breach is also known as a data spill or data leak.

According to Techopedia, a data breach is “an incident which involves the unauthorized or illegal viewing, access or retrieval of data by an individual, app, or service”.¹ This type of security breach is specifically for stealing sensitive information and can be performed physically by accessing a computer or network, or remotely by bypassing network security.

Data breaches commonly occur after a hacker or similar unauthorized user accesses a secure database or data repository. Frequently conducted via the internet or a network connection, data breaches usually revolve around the pursuit of logical or digital data.

According to Symantec, the most common form of data lost to data breaches was personally identifiable information—such as full names, credit card numbers, and Social Security numbers—with personal financial information close behind.²

After they have acquired this data, hackers may use it to commit identity theft and other cybercrimes, including applying their stolen information and gaining administrator access to your entire network.

In addition to data loss, a data breach harms a business and its customers in other ways. The damage extends to the cost to boost cybersecurity, and repair and update the exploitable vulnerability, as well as the long-term damage to the enterprise’s reputation and its customers who had their private information stolen.

How does a data breach occur?

Multinational cybersecurity and defense company Trend Micro argues that data breaches are a four-step process that includes the following actions for a general data breach:

• Research. The hacker probes the computer or network for vulnerabilities.
• Attack. The hacker begins the attack, making contact using a network or social attack.
  • Network attack. This attack involves network manipulation. The hacker uses infrastructure, system and application weaknesses to infiltrate the victim’s computer or network.
  • Social attack. This attack involves social manipulation. The hacker tricks or baits employees into giving them access to the computer or network. This method includes tricking an employee into revealing login credentials or duping the employee into opening a malicious attachment.
• Exfiltration. Once they have broken into a computer, hackers can then attack the network or pilfer the company’s data. After the network is damaged or the data is extracted, the attack is considered successful.³

Why do data breaches occur?

An anti-malware software manufacturer Malwarebytes argues that “a data breach isn’t a threat or attack in its own right and instead comes as a result of a cyberattack that allows hackers to gain unauthorized access to a computer system or network and steal its data”.⁴ As the process of digitizing content rises and the cloud continues to grow, data breaches will continue to occur.

Targeted data breaches typically occur for the following reasons: 

Exploiting system vulnerabilities

Hackers use exploits of systematic vulnerabilities in software or systems to gain unauthorized access to a computer or network and its data. Exploits are commonly found in operating systems, internet browsers, and a variety of different apps.

Hidden within a system’s code, these vulnerabilities are sought out by hackers, as well as cybersecurity experts and researchers. For example, older operating systems can, unfortunately, have built-in vulnerabilities that today’s hackers can easily exploit to access a computer’s data.

While the hackers want to use the exploits for their own malicious gain, the cyber security agents want to better understand the exploits and how they can be patched or otherwise modified to prevent data breaches and boost cybersecurity.

To make their dubious work easier, some cybercriminal groups will package different exploits into automated kits. These kits allow criminals with little technical knowledge to take advantage of exploits.

Weak passwords

As its name implies, a weak password is a password that is easy to determine by humans and computers. These passwords often contain the name of the user’s spouse, children, pets or address, since they’re easy for the user to remember. The passwords may not be case sensitive or just generally fail to use capital letters or symbols.

Weak passwords are easy for hackers to guess or use in brute force attacks or spidering to figure out a user’s password. Also, never have your password written down on your desk or be aware of anyone who makes be “shoulder surfing” when you’re entering a password. 

SQL injection attack

Structured query language (SQL) injection attacks exploit the vulnerabilities in an unsecured website’s SQL database management software. To execute a SQL injection attack, a hacker embeds malicious code into a vulnerable site or application, then pivots to the backend database.

For example, a hacker changes the code in a retailer’s website so that when they perform a search for “best-selling headphones,” instead of yielding results for great headphones, the retailer’s website provides the hacker with a list of customers and their credit card information.

A less sophisticated type of cyberattack, SQL attacks can be performed using automated programs similar to those used for exploits.

Spyware

Spyware is malware that infects your computer or network to “spy” on you and otherwise gather information about you, your computer, and what websites you visit.

Victims often are infected by spyware after downloading or installing something that seems benign, only to have spyware bundled together with it. You can also get spyware by clicking on a malicious link or as a secondary infection from a virus.

Alternatively, spyware can make its way onto your computer as a secondary infection via a Trojan like Emotet. As reported on the Malwarebytes Labs blog, Emotet, TrickBot, and other banking Trojans have found new life as delivery tools for spyware and other types of malware. Once your system is infected, the spyware sends all your personal data back to the C&C servers run by the cybercriminals.

After your computer has been infected with spyware and it collects information about you, it then forwards this information to a remote location, such as command and control (C&C) servers or a similar repository where cybercriminals can access it.

Phishing

Phishing attacks usually use social engineering to manipulate its victims’ emotions against logic and reasoning and get them to share sensitive information. They are often performed using email spoofing-based attacks or cloned website-based attacks that function similarly.

Attackers employing phishing and spam email tactics will trick users into doing the following:

• Revealing their user and password credentials
• Downloading malicious attachments
• Visiting malicious websites

For example, you could get an email that looks like it’s from your credit card company, asking you to verify made-up charges to your account, and prompting you to log in using a link to a fake version of the credit card site. Unsuspecting victims attempt to log in to the fake site using their real usernames and passwords. Once hackers have that information, they can log in to and access your credit card account, and use it for identity theft and similar cybercrime.

Drive-by downloads

Drive-by downloads are cyber attacks that can install spyware, adware, malware, and similar software onto a user’s computer without the user’s authorization. They allow hackers to take advantage of exploits and security flaws in browsers, applications, and operating systems.

This cyber attack doesn’t necessarily need to trick the users into enabling it. Unlike phishing and spoofing attacks where the user needs to click a malicious link or download a malicious attachment, drive-by downloads just engage with a computer or device without the user’s permission. 

Broken or misconfigured access controls

If a website administrator isn’t careful, the administrator could establish access controls that would make parts of a system that are meant to be private able to be accessed by the public. This misstep could be something as careless as neglecting to set certain backend folders that contain sensitive data to private. General users tend to remain unaware of broken or misconfigured access controls. However, hackers that perform specific Google searches can locate these folders and access them. A good comparison to this situation is a burglar entering a house through an unlocked window as opposed to a burglar breaking into a house through a locked door. 

Benevolent hackers and data breaches

A data breach, similar to most types of cyber thefts, involves hackers attempting to gain unauthorized access to your computer or network and steal your private information. However, there are some instances where this theft is performed with benevolent intentions.

Like many cybersecurity researchers, “white hat” hackers and other benevolent hackers will attempt to break into your computer or network to discover exploits and vulnerabilities, and then make others aware so that they can create a solution that remedies the exploit.

For example, after nine months of reverse engineering work, an academic hacker team from KU Leuven University in Belgium published a paper in September 2018 that revealed how it defeated Tesla’s encryption for the Model S.⁵ The team’s work helped Tesla create new cybersecurity technology for its vehicles that remedied the exploit the KU Leuven team discovered and used it to clone the Model S’s key fob.

What indicators should you look for?

Here are several indicators that you should be aware of in the event of a possible data breach or similar cyber attack:

• Irregularly high activity for your system, disk, or network. This increased activity is particularly worrisome if it occurs during what would normally be an idle period.
• Activity on network ports or applications that are usually inactive. An unusual activity where the ports or applications are listening to network ports that they wouldn’t usually be listening to.
• Unrecognized software is installed or odd system preferences are established.
• Unrecognized and untraceable system configuration changes, including firewall changes, services reconfigurations, new startup program installations, or scheduled tasks.
• Spikes in activity in a cloud services “last activity” overview that tracks abnormal behavior. This activity includes logging in at unusual times, from unusual locations, or multiple locations in a short time period and other abnormal user activity.
• Unanticipated user account lockouts, password resets, or group membership deviations.
• Frequent system crashes or application crashes.
• Alerts from malware or antivirus protections, including notifications that they have been disabled.
• Frequent pop-ups or unexpected redirects while browsing the internet, or browser configuration changes, such as a new home page or search engine preferences.
• Contacts report receiving unusual emails or direct messages from social media from you that you didn’t send them.
• You receive a message from an attacker demanding money, such as from ransomware.

What can you do to detect and respond to a data breach?

In addition to the precursors and indicators, here are several guiding principles that can bolster your ability to detect and respond to an intrusion into your system:

No changes, no red flags

Avoid making any changes to your computer or network. Making changes in a system where there’s a suspected intrusion risk damaging or destroying evidence, or even worsening the situation. The obvious trade-off here is the weight of the incident and the hacker’s intent, as well as your business objectives and the breach’s impact on them. 

Gather evidence

Be sure to collect evidence of what you suspect to be an intrusion and ensure that the evidence is stored somewhere with little risk of data loss. This process will help with incident analysis and post-incident decision-making, as well as forensic data collection.

Log files, disk and memory information, malware samples, running process lists, user activity lists, and active network connections are all data that can be collected for evidence.

In adhering to the no changes, no red flags rule, don’t make any changes to the system while collecting this information. And as with the first rule, consider your situation, the weight of the incident, and other relevant factors when weighing the advantages or disadvantages of your actions.

If you can access them, consider using remote forensics tools and work closely with your IT operations or cybersecurity team. If central logging isn’t something that you have, then ensure that logs are copied to a read-only location on a different computer or system from the attacked one.

Record everything

Note-taking during incident response can provide a treasure trove of data. Try to record every action that’s taken, including the verification, correlation, and pivoting actions. Ensure that you haven’t missed anything now that might be important later. Your notes can help establish timelines and determine system areas that need support.

Confer with your peers

Once you have established a general understanding of everything that’s occurring with your system, confer with your peers and verify your findings. This process includes referencing threat intelligence sources, as well as industry information sharing and analysis centers (ISACs) and national computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs). This step helps you establish what others have already done and what steps need to be done to contain the intrusion, and how to reverse the damage it caused.

Create an internal report

In addition to reporting observed incidents, you should also report any critical ongoing incidents that may impact your business to your stakeholders. A high-level analysis of the attack should include the following facts:

• Whether the attack was targeted
• Whether the attack was observed before
• Whether other companies or organizations have experienced similar attacks
• What damage it has caused to date and the damage it’s expected to cause in the future
• What was the intent of the attack?

Spread awareness about reports   

Indicators can include reports from people within your organization. These internal reports can supply essential information for raising awareness of unusual behavior or situations. Streamline the reporting process and spread awareness about the reports among your employees. Consider establishing a “report an incident” button on your organization’s internal homepage.

Make sure that your employees are aware of your cybersecurity team or IT support team. Be sure your employees can easily contact these teams if they have any questions or suggestions. Create help desk questions for these teams to ask to help them collect information.  

Foster transparency and a sense of ownership with the reports. This process can mean following up with each individual that submitted a report and providing an update regarding the incident specific to each individual’s report.

By incorporating this process into your workplace, not only will you help to cultivate an IT security culture and potentially boost your cyber resilience and security, but employees will be more likely to report anything they feel is unusual. This combined process and culture can help you shut down intrusions when they start.

Be sure to include in your report any mitigation actions that were taken, if they were effective, and what additional actions you can expect to take in the future. While it behooves you to include the appropriate technical details, be sure to focus on how this attack will impact the business and its employees. 

What can I do to prevent a data breach?

There’s no perfect solution for preventing a data breach outside of never going on the internet, never booting up your computer, or never getting your network online. Obviously, they aren’t acceptable solutions for anyone.

Fortunately, when reducing the risk of a data breach, there are several steps you can take to bolster your cybersecurity and cyber resilience.

• Use strong passwords. Consider using a password generator that creates random combinations of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Consider using a password tracking program that helps manage these passwords for you.
• Monitor your finances. Regularly review your bank and similar financial account activity. If possible, use activity alerts that inform you of any unusual activity. 
• Monitor your credit report. If someone tries to use your private information to open a credit card or bank account using your name, the credit report will show it. A variety of sites such as Credit Karma offer credit reporting at no charge.
• Act immediately. As soon as you see any unusual activity, take immediate action and contact the respective credit card company, bank, or similar financial institution. If you were the victim of a data breach, then be sure to inform them of this fact.
• Make your phone secure. Always create either a short numerical password or a swipe password for your phone. If you have a fingerprint scanner on your phone, then you should use that, too. Using these security features provides a line of defense against unauthorized access to your phone and all the personal information stored on it in the event that it’s lost or stolen.    
• Pay attention to URLs. Try to only use secure URLs. Secure URLs begin with “https://”. The “s” stands for secure and the HTTP request uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), a protocol used for secure communication between two parties. 
• Install up-to-date antivirus software. Depending on what software you are using and how your network is set up, it may also include a firewall. It should go without saying that having reliable antivirus software with up-to-date definitions generally boosts your cybersecurity and cyber resilience, and generally improves your resistance to cyber attacks.
• Regularly back up your files. Establish a regular schedule for backing up your files and storing these backups in a secure environment. This process will help you with creating recovery point objectives (RPOs) in the event of data loss or corruption.
• Format or destroy your old hard drives. If you are retiring old systems and you’re planning on cannibalizing the components, then be sure to format the hard drives before installing them into new computers. If you’re simply getting rid of these systems and don’t plan on reusing the components, then first make sure that you have backed up your files. Secondly, dispose of your hard drives in such a way that it ensures no one will be able to make use of them. The simplest solution is often to take a hammer to them.
• Don’t post important information online. This step is a practical one that shouldn’t require much explanation. Don’t post private, sensitive, or otherwise very important information online, including on your social media accounts. It’s also generally a good idea to set your social media accounts to “private” to limit who can view your social media account’s content.
• Enlist identity theft protection and credit monitoring services. Consider using identity theft protection and credit monitoring services, as they help prevent identity theft and can notify you in the event it occurs. 
  
• Use secure payment services. Paypal is a great example of a secure payment service, as it doesn’t require you to give your credit card information to make a payment. Instead, it helps you make secure payments using your accounts and without requiring you to input sensitive information.