Alan Cleaver via Compfight

I recently crafted a piece for Huffington Post, What’s a data breach, in which I defined the vagaries of the different types of causes of a data breach.  While I list the different types, I welcome opinion on others, and urge you to read the Huffington Post piece for specific examples which ended in a data breach.

Stolen Items:  Items are stolen, either as a targeted theft or a theft based on opportunity.

Lost Items:  Items go missing regularly.

Malware/Crimeware:  Your device is being targeted.  Period.  You need to keep the device as secure as possible. To accomplish this you may have to undergo some changes of normal routine so as to lower the risk to your computer.

Disposal/Destruction: Too many times do we read about a hard drive having been recycled that still had recoverable data.

Insider:  Malevolent or Inadvertent both can end up in a data breach.

Websites:  Registration gone bad, user databases left insecure; infected web code delivering an exploit.

The key message, if you are entrusted with data, do take the time to understand the processes and procedures which are in place to protect the data.  An easy rule of thumb, treat data as you would cash, you don’t leave it laying about, and you don’t give it to someone without knowing why, you keep it in a safe and protected place or locale.

Prevendra data tip:  Data Breaches and Laptops