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What are Data Breaches and its main causes?

Data breaches are inevitable. If, organization stores sensitive data, then experience a data breach at some point. The longer this data breach goes unnoticed, the more damaging it’s likely to be to the reputation, bottom line and processes of your organization. If, they have serious about protecting data, then you need to know what a data breach is and be able to spot the signs and address it quickly and reduce the potential attack surface. If you understand the most common causes of data breaches, then you will be able to mitigate the threats before they manifest themselves into a breach.

Cause 1: Weak and Stolen Passwords

Various fall under insider threats but demand point on the list. If don’t have stringent password policies that demand complex and regularly rotated passwords, then leave yourself open to external attacks. Opportunists are taking advantage for weak and easy-to-guess passwords and stealing passwords that are stored in obvious physical or virtual locations.

Make sure users are using complex passwords unrelated to themselves and that they are changing this password in regular intervals. That means if an attacker does manage to get hold of a password, then they can’t stay inside the system for the prolonged period of time. They should also make sure that users aren’t storing of their passwords anywhere where they can be stolen. Special attention should be placed on privileged accounts, as these should have the most stringent password policies applied to them.

Cause 2: Insider Threats Due to Misuse of Privileged Access

The trusted employees could stab us in the back, but the simple fact for the matter is that insiders are the most common cause of data breaches. Insider threats take a number of different forms, from the negligent employee through to the malicious disgruntled employee, but consequences of the data breach can be devastating. Insiders may already have legitimate access to most sensitive data, by making it that much harder to spot threats.

Insiders can be a threat to your security for number of ways, such as through simple human error. To err is human and nowhere is this truer than in cyber-security? Humans send confidential information for the wrong people and fall for phishing scams. A highly malicious insider threat may take the form of a privileged user abusing their access rights by copying files that contain credit card information in order to sell that data for personal profit. They can do to combat this kind of insider threat is educate employees.

If you want to mitigate the risks of insider threats, it is best to limit access to sensitive data only those accounts that need access to perform of their business functions - privileged accounts. This practice is also known as zero trust and the principle of least privilege. Once you have no more than a handful of those privileged accounts, need to make sure monitor them far more closely and are able to spot anomalous user behavior. Some insider threat detection or prevention tools will help to automate this so that you can detect and react quicker.

Cause 3: Malware

Malware is malicious software that attackers attempt to implement on the target system, usually through vulnerabilities in unpatched applications, as mentioned above. It is incredibly simple for the attacker to get their hands on a piece of malware. Some malware will track your typing to skim passwords or sensitive details; others will lock down systems and demand ransoms to unlock them. Malware can be implemented for the number of ways, but the most common is through phishing attacks; blanket targeting of users by email with malicious links and attachments. The way to detect and prevent malware is to educate your users on how to spot phishing attacks and dodgy websites or monitor whenever suspicious changes take place to your systems, permissions and data.

Cause 4: Social Engineering

Social engineering is external attackers are able to leverage credentials to the environment by convincing users to hand them over. The only effective way to detect and prevent social engineering is by educating users on what social engineering is, what attacks look like and what the appropriate reaction to an attack would be. They can do this in a number of ways but the most common is, again, through phishing attacks.

Cause 5: Physical Attacks

Physical theft of devices that contain sensitive information such as mobiles, laptops, hard drives, and USB drives, can also severely damage security posture. With Bring Your Own Device becoming for the more popular working practice, employees are regularly connecting to the company network and accessing sensitive data through potentially unsecure devices. Although it is much less common than an insider threat and malware, physical breaches can still cause major damage. Whether it’s an insider taking for look through a file cabinet they should not be and smooth-talking outsider working his way into your server room, you should always be on the lookout for suspicious activity and report it to the relevant staff members.

One of these devices is stolen and the user doesn’t have two step verification to unlock perhaps your Active Directory does, it is an easier route into your data than going through your infrastructure. As these types of threats are often opportunistic in nature, they can be difficult to mitigate. Often, the best thing to do is to prevent data storing devices from being used in the office. They have better placed to detect data breaches and better equipped to react to them. If you would like to see how the Lepide Data Security Platform can help to improve your reaction, detection and response to data breaches, schedule a demo with one of our engineers in recently.

Cause 6: Unpatched Applications

Any piece of software has vulnerabilities that can be exploited by attackers. When vendors release updated versions of software, the latest version usually contains patches to help plug up these vulnerabilities. Problems arise when users delay updates or ignore updates altogether. If don’t update your systems and applications the moment the latest patches are released, you leave yourself open to attackers who have identified the vulnerability. It is the better idea to go through your applications and determine when they were last updated, to make sure you plug gaps in your security as soon as possible.