Know the Steps Involved in a Data Breach OperationData breach is defined as a security breach that causes damage, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure, or access to personal data that is accidentally or unlawfully transmitted, stored or processed. It done by a cybercriminal who infiltrate data sources and extract sensitive information. Data breach could be done physically by accessing computer network or remotely through bypassing the network security. There are several steps that usually taken by cybercriminals to perform data breach. First, they will conduct a research that aims to look for organization’s security weaknesses which include people, systems, or network. Then, cybercriminals will create an initial contact to organization through network attack or social attack. In network attack, cybercriminals will use the infrastructure, system, and application weaknesses to infiltrate organization’s network. Meanwhile, in social attack, they will trick or bait employees to give them the access to company’s network. Lastly, if the attack has successfully launched, cybercriminals will be able to extract confidential data of organization. Potential Consequences of Data BreachIn digital transformation era, data breaches and hacking have been in the news lately with cyber incidents taking the center of stage. The impact and consequences of data breach on business could not be underestimated. There are several potential consequences of data breach that include but not limited the short-term consequence such as financial impact and long-term consequence such as reputational harm. First, for the short-term consequences, data breaches could pose a diverse set of risks and at its core, the financial impact is one of data breach impacts that could give immediate consequences for organizations. Data breaches will require organization to allocate several expenses such as paying for direct fines and fees, forensic investigators, and future security costs. Second, for long-term consequence, reputational harm might be the biggest fallout caused by data breaches. This is due to the organization failure in protecting valuable data of their customers, which makes customers lose their trust in organizations as well as affects organization’s ability to attract new customers and future investment. Create Defenses Against Data BreachThe first line of defense against data breach in organization often lies with its employees. Therefore, providing security awareness training for employees is very important. It aims to help employees understand their responsibilities in handling information and equips them with the ability to prevent data breaches. Then, organizations should have a good information governance that consists of an up-to-date inventory of information assets and server locations. This information governance is important for understanding data breach risk as well as to create swift and effective data breach response in the future. Furthermore, in order to create a strong defense against data breach, organizations should conduct a regular vulnerability analysis to define, identify and classify information security holes in networks and other IT infrastructure in order to mitigate risk related to data breaches. Organization could also conduct hands-on trainings with all appropriate parties as an effort to defense against data breach. This hands-on training will provide organization with a real-life scenario of how to handle data breach, create response plan, as well as executing the response plan. This kind of preparation is critical and could make a huge difference in the success or failure of an organization in dealing with real-life data breaches. ConclusionData breach has been a world-wide phenomenon as cyber incidents are increase. Data breaches is also known for having short-term and long-term consequences for organizations and most of them are giving negative impacts for organizations. However, there are several ways and best practices to create a defense against data breach that could be implemented by organizations. Reference:Data Breaches 101: How They Happen, What Gets Stolen, and Where It All Goes. (2018, August 10). Security News. https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cyber-attacks/data-breach-101General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – Official Legal Text. (2019, September 2). General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). https://gdpr-info.eu/Taney, B. (n.d.). Strategies for Preventing and Responding to a Data Breach. Www.Epiqglobal.Com. Retrieved May 25, 2021, from https://www.epiqglobal.com/epiq/media/resourcefiles/preventing-responding-data-breach.pdf

Data breach is defined as a security breach that causes damage, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure, or access to personal data that is accidentally or unlawfully transmitted, stored or processed.

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Best Practices for Understanding and Preventing Data Breaches