The Definition of Breach
A breach refers to a violation or infraction of a law, obligation, or agreement. In the context of data security, a breach occurs when confidential or sensitive information is exposed or accessed by unauthorized individuals.
Types of Breach
There are two main types of breaches: negligence breaches and malicious breaches. Negligence breaches occur due to inadvertent errors, while malicious breaches involve intentional actions to compromise security.
Examples of Breach
One well-known example of a breach is the Equifax data breach in 2017, where hackers gained access to personal information of over 147 million individuals. Another example is the Yahoo data breach in 2013, which affected over 3 billion user accounts.
Case Study: Target Data Breach
In 2013, Target experienced a massive data breach where hackers stole credit card information of 40 million customers. The breach cost Target over $200 million in expenses related to the incident.
Statistics on Breaches
- According to IBM’s 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million.
- In 2020, there were over 1001 reported data breaches in the United States, exposing over 155.8 million records.
