A data leak occurs when sensitive, confidential information is unintentionally exposed to unauthorized parties, typically due to poor security measures or system vulnerabilities.
Blog Post
8 minute read
Sep 04, 2024
Data leaks can result in the loss of personal, financial, or proprietary business data, making it vital for organizations to prioritize the prevention and elimination of these data leaks.
Preventing and stopping data leaks is one of the most important aspects of a cybersecurity strategy. This is because it can lead to data theft, compromising information security, damaging revenues and reputation, and even leading to legal consequences.
Understanding what a data leak is is the first step in successfully preparing a strategy to prevent them from occurring and swiftly addressing them if they should emerge.
The more of your sensitive information that’s leaked, the more vulnerable you’ll be to severe cyberattack. Even if the leaked data doesn’t lead to a cyberattack, if it becomes public, it can undermine your company’s operations. Products or services in development that are not yet ready for the public might be exposed, giving competitors an unwelcome edge.
Over the last decade, more data has been created, bought, sold, and stolen than ever in history, which has also made it the most valuable currency on the market. As such, keeping your data secure should be a top priority for leaders, decision-makers, and employees in your organization.
Information Security vs. Cybersecurity
Data security practices fall under a specific arm of cybersecurity known as information security. While cybersecurity refers to the entire umbrella of security practices that an organization deploys, information security specifically addresses data security and data privacy.
This makes information security a critical aspect to prioritize in your cybersecurity strategy when considering data leak solutions.
The Human Factor in Data Security
Employees remain one of an organization’s largest vulnerabilities. This is why a comprehensive approach to security will include cybersecurity awareness and training for employees at onboarding and regularly throughout their tenure.
As sophisticated as hackers and the technology that they use have become, the most common entry point for cybercriminals is still employees. Social engineering scams like phishing or vishing, use fraudulent messaging to dupe victims into handing over their credentials. From there, the bad actor can log into network systems without raising suspicion and may even be able to move laterally.
One of the reasons phishing is such a successful technique is that it prays on people’s fears or creates a sense of urgency, in turn manipulating them into handing over data, often via malicious links in an email, text, or other message.
However, this also highlights the importance of being cognizant about the different networks over which you conduct business, and the types of content you post to your social media networks. For example, you probably don’t want to use the public Wi-Fi at your local coffee shop, as it’s security features won’t be robust enough to protect your sensitive work information.
While data leaks and social engineering scams are different attack vectors commonly used by cybercriminals, they share the common goals of data theft, unauthorized network access, and financial chaos.
Luckily, using a multi-factor authentication (MFA) protocol, and establishing a segmented network can help prevent phishers from doing damage, but ideally, your employees are well trained and your security software is up to date, so phishers won’t even get in the front gate.
The Role of Employee Credentials
From a data leakage perspective, overlooking the importance and value of a strong password policy can prove to be the Achilles heel of the organization.
This emphasizes the need for organizations to commit resources toward establishing a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy that features a strong password policy and works to prevent, identify, isolate, and neutralize cyberattacks and data leaks before they become problematic.
In addition to phishing scams and social engineering campaigns, brute force cyberattacks make use of an algorithm that systematically tests password variations in order to break into a network.
With this in mind, unique, complex, and lengthy passwords, that are updated on a regular basis, will make it very difficult for malicious actors to break in with a brute force tactic.
88% of passwords used in successful attacks consisted of 12 characters or less.
How Do Data Leaks Affect the Future?
Minimizing the volume of data that exits your organization without authorization should be a top priority in today’s economy of data and information.
The following are just a few tips on preventing data leakage from occurring.
Unified communication solutions (UCaaS), like Zoom, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, are not born equal. For example, Teams and Slack will encrypt data at rest in their data centers, while Zoom only encrypted data in transit for several years. (They finally started employing end-to-end encryption towards the end of 2020.)
This is not to say one is better than the other, just that businesses should have a clear awareness of the security features that come with the tech they use regularly. By cultivating a suite of tools you feel comfortable and secure using, your cybersecurity strategies will start to take form.
Make sure you know exactly how your communication tools and their associated data protection methods affect your daily operations and data security.
2. Educate Your Workforce
The importance of employee security awareness really can't be overstated. Even with the most sophisticated cybersecurity technology working to protect your business, an unaware employee can be a wide-open entry point for the savvy cybercriminal.
When businesses invest in cybersecurity, awareness and training programs are sometimes forgotten. Establish cybersecurity awareness training as a standard aspect of new employee onboarding and offer continual training on a regular basis to keep your staff up to date on the most common cyberattacks of the day.
3. Secure Endpoints
Endpoints can be mobile phones, laptops, tablets, or any IoT device that’s network-enabled and accesses company data. Due to the expansion of operational technology, like smart thermostats, many organizational endpoints are left unsecured and are rarely updated after installation. That means critical security updates are often neglected.
Securing all of the endpoints that exist within an organization is vital because if one endpoint gets breached and the network isn’t properly segmented, the hack can easily spread to other devices, siphon as much data as desired, and wreak havoc on the entire network.
If you need help securing your endpoints, you may consider a mobile device management service that can help you manage, update, and secure all of your network-enabled devices.
Wrapping Up on Data Leaks
Data leaks are a very real problem for businesses in the era of the data-driven economy. With cybercrime costing organizations more money every year, it’s critical to prioritize the establishment of a cybersecurity strategy that offers as much coverage as possible.
By identifying and mitigating data leaks, offering staff cybersecurity awareness training, and investing in both the necessary tools and professionals that execute cybersecurity strategies, you’ll be able to significantly improve your security while minimizing your cyber risk.
