
When Is a Data Breach a Data Breach?
A data breach remains a common headline in the news cycle. A different company, website or social network reports a security issue almost daily. If it feels like using the internet has become a risky endeavor, the feeling is accurate.
But what exactly classifies an event as a data breach? The world wide web is littered with different security gaps and vulnerabilities. But that doesn’t mean they have been exposed or attacked yet. A true data breach is an event where an outside party has stolen, obtained or viewed information that they were not authorized to access.
The worst data breaches in history have affected hundreds of millions of people. But even an incident that appears relatively minor in terms of raw numbers can still have a damaging effect on a company’s reputation and revenues.
Physical Breaches

The rise of cloud computing has hidden the logistics of how data storage and management is handled. We shouldn’t overlook the reality that data must still reside on a physical hard drive or memory platform in order to be used and accessed on the web. Back-end databases are often replicated across multiple servers and hard drives in order to allow for better performance and reliability.
The reliance on physical hard drives represents a frequent risk when it comes to data breaches. Some cybercriminals specifically direct their efforts towards physically acquiring a piece of hardware from the actual premises of a company as opposed to trying to infiltrate from a distance through a network hack. The reason is that organizations oftentimes spend more time securing their digital systems than their actual location.
If a cybercriminal manages to make off with a hard drive or device, there is little that can be done to stop it from becoming a full-blown data (Read more...)
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from The State of Security authored by Tripwire Guest Authors. Read the original post at: https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-data-protection/data-breach/