Data breaches and their consequences

 

Data breach is a security incident associated with sensitive information about individuals or businesses being accessed by unauthorised third party or parties. Data breaches are usually caused by a threat actor action but not they are not necessarily caused by threat actors. Data breaches might also be the result of an employee sending an email to a wrong email address, accidentally publishing personal identifiable information or posting a picture on social media with a password written on the sticky note in the background. Whether it was a result of a cyber attack or accidental data exposure, there are negative consequences that could follow the breach. For companies and government agencies who allowed it to occur these include fines, reputational damage, loss of customers, legal costs, imprisonment of responsible employees, costs associated with notifying affected parties, expenses to hire a forensics team to investigate and contain the security incident, intellectual property loss, loss of competitive advantage. For individuals affected by the breach the consequences might include scammers trying to accesses their leaked records to impersonate a bank or another institution and get them to wire money, identity theft when criminals use the exposed records to take out a loan, interpersonal problems when sensitive information becomes known to others, being blackmailed into doing unethical things or even committing crimes in order to comply with cyber criminals’ demands, mental health issues associated with fears of cyber stalking and identity theft.