Good to Know About the Most Regular Sources of Data Leakage in 2023

Given the value placed on data in this day and age, it is not unexpected that malevolent cyber actors now primarily focus on hacking systems to trigger data leaks. And companies are still having trouble dealing with this reality.

Software Misconfiguration

When a program's settings conflict with the security policy of the organisation and allow for unanticipated behaviour, this is referred to as a misconfiguration. Despite being fundamental cyber hygiene, even major tech businesses occasionally overlook important details.

Organisations should exercise extra caution when moving services or data to cloud environments because misconfigurations are frequent in this process and can happen for no other reason than that the instructions weren't followed or weren't understood.

Theft of Data

Since anyone can be an insider with malicious intent, these worries led to the development of zero-trust cybersecurity solutions, which place higher risks on privileged users who have access to sensitive data.

But this does not rule out the possibility that outside forces are involved in data theft. Earlier this year, a study summarising the numerous safety worries voiced by Tesla customers was published in a German newspaper.

The electric car company claimed that the private information sent to the newspaper was taken from its database, but it was unable to determine whether an internal or external actor was to blame.

Ransomware

Ransomware attacks have increased significantly worldwide over the past year, according to a recent analysis on the subject.

The US is the biggest victim of assaults, accounting for 43% of all attacks that have been reported globally. The rise in attacks is mostly attributable to malevolent actors using zero-day exploits.

Therefore, ransomware attacks are becoming more sophisticated as well as more common. Organisations must therefore increase their attention to stop data leaks.

Notably, a ransomware attack occurred in February against DISH, a satellite broadcaster. Its internal servers and IT systems suffered substantial failures as a result of the attack, and roughly 300,000 people's personal information was exposed.

But this is only one of numerous ransomware assaults that have targeted different businesses and facilities.

Software Vulnerability (API)

Attacks including phishing and social engineering commonly aim to obtain email data.

Threat actors were able to obtain the email addresses of over 200 million X (Twitter) users thanks to a platform API bug. Even though the breach happened in 2021 and was fixed in January of the following year, by the middle of 2022, the data sets were beginning to be sold on the dark web and were eventually made freely accessible.

APIs were a game-changing invention in software development, but, since sensitive data is increasingly transmitted over this channel, data exposure risks have escalated.

Because of this, software security can be readily compromised by API weaknesses such as broken authentication issues, which allow malicious parties to access data without authorization.

import requests

# Insecure way of storing API key (vulnerable to exposure)
insecure_api_key = "your_insecure_api_key_here"

def fetch_data_using_insecure_key():
    url = "https://api.example.com/data"
    headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {insecure_api_key}"}

    response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)

    if response.status_code == 200:
        data = response.json()
        print("Fetched data:", data)
    else:
        print("Failed to fetch data:", response.status_code)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    fetch_data_using_insecure_key()

In this example, the API key is hard-coded directly into the script, making it susceptible to accidental exposure if the code is shared or stored in a public repository. A more secure approach would involve using environment variables or a configuration file outside of version control to store sensitive information like API keys.

Remember that this example is intentionally insecure for educational purposes. In a real-world scenario, it's crucial to follow best practices for securing API keys and other sensitive information.

How to Stop Data Leaks

Although it can be very difficult to manage, preventing data leaking is not an impossible challenge nowadays due to the more complex nature of cyber attacks. However, these simple procedures ought to enable you to avoid the most typical sources of data loss.

1. Implement a reliable data detection and response system. In contrast to conventional data loss prevention systems, DDR solutions place a higher priority on behavioural analytics and real-time monitoring via machine learning to automatically identify and respond to data incidents.

2. Assess the risks associated with dealing with third parties: When it comes to exchanging data, doing business as usual with other parties is no longer an option. You must understand where both organisations stand and how you can complement rather than jeopardise one another in terms of security because the dangers of your partners also apply to you.

3. Protect all endpoints: The number of remote access points that connect to business networks has significantly increased. Additionally, they are spread, sometimes even globally. By using a zero-trust strategy, endpoints are kept out of the path of assaults.

4. Cybersecurity hygiene: As previously mentioned, data leaking may be the result of unsanitary procedures. They should all be in place to assist you keep your guard up; techniques like encryption, data backups, password management, etc., are not out of date.

Conclusion

To reduce the risks of data loss, proactive steps, regular security reviews, and an all-encompassing cybersecurity policy are essential. Every type of organisation, including the biggest IT businesses, has this problem, as we can see from the examples. As a result, all business executives need to start taking data security seriously.