Data Breach

What Does Data Breach Mean?

A data breach is an incident that involves the unauthorized or illegal viewing, access or retrieval of data by an individual, application or service. It is a type of security breach specifically designed to steal and/or publish data to an unsecured or illegal location.

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A data breach is also known as a data spill or data leak.

Techopedia Explains Data Breach

A data breach occurs when an unauthorized hacker or attacker accesses a secure database or repository. Data breaches are typically geared toward logical or digital data and often conducted over the Internet or a network connection.

A data breach may result in data loss, including financial, personal and health information. A hacker also may use stolen data to impersonate himself to gain access to a more secure location. For example, a hacker’s data breach of a network administrator’s login credentials can result in access of an entire network.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…