What Is a Modern Breach and How Can It Be Prevented?

In the modern world, data is a precious asset. That means malicious actors will go to great lengths to get their hands on your organization’s information — and if that information is in the cloud, it’s especially vulnerable to those outside forces. You likely have some cybersecurity measures in place, but are you prepared for modern breaches that use constantly evolving tactics to exploit vulnerabilities and gain access?

To prevent data breaches, you must first understand them. Once you’re aware of the increasingly sophisticated methods threat actors are employing — and the consequences of failing to protect your data — you can take a proactive approach by creating an effective data loss prevention policy. Here’s what you need to know about modern breaches to protect your organization.

‍

What is a modern breach?

One of the factors that makes modern breaches so difficult to contend with is their diversity. There’s no single type of attack you can prevent or solitary security policy that will cover all of your data. Sophisticated cyber criminals use a number of strategies to illegally obtain data, such as social engineering. Threat actors will do everything they can to find and exploit weaknesses in your existing security, particularly if you use VPNs or don’t have stringent MFA and SSO requirements.

Because so much of our data is now spread out across multiple SaaS and other cloud-based applications, it’s also much harder to keep track of these potential vulnerabilities. That’s the real threat of modern breaches: It only takes one weak password, misplaced device, or overlooked exploit for hackers to access your data from virtually anywhere in the world.

For an example of a modern breach in action, let’s look at the 2019 Capital One “cyber incident.” In what was called “one of the biggest data breaches ever,” a bad actor gained access to the personal financial data of over 100 million credit card users and applicants. The breach included 140,000 Social Security numbers, a million Canadian social insurance numbers, 80,000 bank account numbers, and an undetermined number of names, addresses, and credit scores.

In Capital One’s case, the cyber criminal, Paige Thompson, gained access by exploiting a misconfigured firewall. Though a horrifying prospect, this breach also serves as a keen warning of how a single vulnerability in your security policies could have devastating consequences.

Consequences of data breaches

Thompson was arrested for the Capital One hack, yet the financial institution still had to pay a price for allowing a vulnerability to be exploited: $190 million to settle the class-action lawsuit. Incredibly, that number doesn’t even crack the top ten highest data breach fines and penalties. In other words, the financial cost of data breaches can be extraordinarily high — and that’s not even the full extent of the consequences. There’s also the loss of consumer trust to consider. Even if you address a security breach immediately, the damage to your reputation is already done. Regaining that trust in your brand can take years — if it happens at all.

If you operate in a highly regulated industry, you may also face legal consequences for breaches. For example, if you’ve failed to properly enforce HIPAA privacy and security rules by leaving unaddressed vulnerabilities in your security policies, you could be looking at additional fines or even prison time.

‍

How to prevent data breaches

Just as there’s no single attack vector for data breaches, there’s no one easy way to prevent them. Instead, you must create a comprehensive data loss prevention (DLP) policy that leverages processes and technology to monitor network activity, identify vulnerabilities or suspicious behavior, and immediately address these potential attack vectors.

Here are some cybersecurity best practices you can weave together to create a thorough defense against modern breaches:

• Enforce zero trust: A zero-trust approach assumes any login attempt could be from a compromised account. Zero trust network access (ZTNA) is a solution where authorized network users must prove their identities strenuously and consistently.
• Use a CASB: ZTNA alone is not enough to protect your data in the cloud. For best results, implement a cloud access security broker (CASB) that offers data security, threat detection, and seamless integration with your organization’s apps and processes.
• Leverage UEBA: A big part of preventing breaches involves identifying suspicious activity before it becomes catastrophic. User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) detects unusual activity and flags it for your IT team before it becomes a bigger problem.
• Get to know EDRM: One of the challenges of modern data security is keeping track of where your data’s going. Enterprise digital rights management (EDRM) protects an organization’s data by encrypting it in real time as it moves between users and apps.

Keep in mind that creating and enforcing these strategies could easily overwhelm even the most experienced IT department. Partnering with a data security platform that specializes in preventing modern breaches is a savvy way to cover your bases.

‍

Secure your data with cloud-native DLP

To protect sensitive information without disrupting productivity, you need a data loss prevention (DLP) solution that provides real-time visibility across the numerous cloud apps that keep modern organizations running smoothly. The right DLP should monitor SaaS and web apps, private apps, cloud repositories, and even email. The Lookout DLP drives consistent data protection from individual endpoints to the cloud, protecting your company against risky behavior and offering security at every level of access. Learn more here.