Cybersecurity Glossary: Breach

Definition
A breach comes as a result of a cyberattack that allows cybercriminals to gain unauthorized access to a computer system or network in order to steal or change the private, sensitive, or confidential personal and financial data of the customers or users contained within.

Significance
Breaches come in many forms:

-An exploit is a type of attack that takes advantage of software bugs or vulnerabilities, which cybercriminals use to gain unauthorized access to a system and data. These vulnerabilities lie hidden within the code of the system and it’s a race between the criminals and the cybersecurity researchers to see…Read more

-A SQL injection (SQLI) is a type of attack that exploits weaknesses in the database management software of unsecure websites in order to get the website to spit out information from the database that it’s really not…Read more

Spyware is a type of malware that infects your computer or network and steals information about you, your Internet usage, and any other valuable data it…Read more

Phishing attacks work by getting us to share sensitive information like our usernames and passwords — often against normal logic and reasoning — by using social engineering to manipulate our emotions, such as greed, fear, shame or…Read more

Broken or misconfigured access controls can make private parts of a given website public when they’re not supposed to be. For example, a website administrator at an online clothing retailer will make certain back-end folders within the website private…Read more

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