A data leak happens when sensitive information is exposed to unauthorized parties due to an error or breach. It can expose personal and financial information or trade secrets, which hackers exploit to commit fraud, ransomware attacks or sell on the dark web.
A common source of data leak is a misconfigured cloud storage server. For example, in 2023, a breach at Microsoft’s Azure Blob Store left 38 TB of data exposed to public view, including passwords, private keys and open source AI training data. The incident was caused by a misconfiguration that left the file storage buckets publicly accessible.
Another common source of a data leak is an employee mistake, such as losing a USB drive or leaving company documents on a public printer. This type of incident often leads to financial losses, reputational damage and legal repercussions. It can also violate GDPR, HIPAA or other regulations and trigger heavy fines.
Despite the best security practices, many organizations are vulnerable to data leaks. In many cases, the most damaging type of data leak occurs when a large amount of personally identifiable information (PII) is compromised. This can include names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card details and other financial information. In addition, a data leak can expose private medical or social information that puts individuals at risk of identity theft and fraud. A data leak can also compromise intellectual property and business secrets, such as classified research, test results, design drawings and documentation for scrapped or unfinished projects, patents, source code for proprietary software and technology and strategic company information.
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