Sensitive Data Exposure: Explanation and Tips to Defend Your Confidentiality

Quick Summary: Sensitive data exposure leads to various legal and reputational repercussions. It occurs when companies have subpar security measures. Keep reading this article to learn more about it and learn ways to prevent it to ensure optimal data protection.

Applications have become an integral part of our lives. Often, these applications require our personal information to sign up for or access their functionality. For example, to watch movies and shows on Netflix, we will have to sign up with our email and other details.

Though these applications make our lives easier, they come at a cost – increasing exposure to our personal information. Despite this, we share personal data because we trust them. Unfortunately, this trust is broken when the security of our data is breached, and it is disclosed to unauthorized parties.

This happens primarily due to the lenient company policies towards security. For instance, using ineffective security measures. Nevertheless, companies can mitigate such risks with stronger security protocols and continuous threat assessments with a vulnerability scanner.

These measures can help companies safeguard digital assets as well as identify and resolve security loopholes to prevent sensitive data exposure vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, most companies fail at this, exposing our data to the unknown. So, our data is not protected, which results in sensitive data exposure.

This article helps to get a solid understanding of sensitive data exposure and more information about this concept. Keep reading for better cybersecurity decisions.

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What is Sensitive Data Exposure?

It occurs when sensitive data like personally identifiable information (PII) is unintentionally or accidentally exposed to third parties. Sometimes, sensitive data exposure can also arise intentionally when an insider leaks the information in an act of revenge or for financial gain.

Inadequate security measures are the reasons behind such data exposure incidents. So, basically, company policy and attitude toward data security are the primary reasons behind exposing sensitive data. Such incidents lead to severe consequences like data theft, legal actions, heavy penalties, etc.

“If you spend more time on coffee than IT security, you will be hacked.” - Richard Clarke

Sensitive Data Exposure vs Data Breach: Understanding the Differences

Do you think sensitive data exposure and data breach are the same? If so, it’s not the complete truth, because there are some differences between them. Think of a data breach as a deliberate attempt by an external entity to gain access to sensitive data. The goal of such an attempt is to inflict damage or extort money. It could be done by a notorious hacker, state-sponsored actors, or cybercriminals.

They exploit common vulnerabilities in web apps to carry out attacks like brute force, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and other web app security risks. As a result, they compromise the security and access data that they can alter, destroy, or steal.

On the other hand, your personal data can be exposed accidentally if a company doesn’t have proper protection measures. It could arise for a reason like lack of encryption, negligence, or human error. All in all, it results in data leaks that could have been avoided with robust security protocols.

Moreover, data exposure occurs because the company doesn’t follow the right web app security practices. Nevertheless, in both these cases, the insider threat remains a common element.

What are the Reasons for Sensitive Data Exposure?

No matter if the data is in transit or at rest, any of the following could be the reason for exposing the data.

• Implicit Trust: When companies follow an open-door policy where data is accessible without many restrictions, it is likely to be compromised. Poor access controls and authentication are examples of this.
• Outdated Components: They are like hidden holes in your systems that can result in compromised data. For example, compatibility issues with outdated software might cause data leakage.
• Weak Encryption: Not properly implementing encryption or using outdated encryption algorithms like SHA-1. Data is not secure when in transit or at rest due to weak encryption.
• Insecure Passwords: When passwords are stored in plain text without salting or hashing, they could be compromised.

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What are the Consequences of Sensitive Data Exposure?

Companies often collect data to provide access to their services or to make improvements. However, many of them don’t take proactive measures to protect it. They often neglect the importance of data protection, leading to the exposure of sensitive information to an unauthorized actor.

It results in grave consequences for a company, causing financial and reputational damage. Besides, end-users are also at risk after such an incident whose data is exposed. Let’s see the consequences of exposure to critical information for both companies and users.

Reputational Damage

It is not hard to imagine the impact of sensitive data exposure on a company’s reputation. Users trust your company, which makes it easy for them to share their personal information. However, this trust is gone when their personal information is disclosed without their knowledge and consent.

Negative media coverage, social media discussions, and unhappy customers all contribute to a dwindling reputation. There is a good example of Equifax in recent history where a security incident caused heavy reputational damage. The data of almost 147 million people was compromised in a security incident.

Consequently, the company faced negative publicity, a significant drop in the ‘buzz’ score, and customer outrage.

Legal Consequences

Companies have legal responsibilities to protect data with respect to diverse laws and regulations. For example, GDPR is a strict data protection law applied to companies handling data of European Union citizens. Failing to comply with this law results in heavy penalties.

Many companies have been fined under GDPR. In fact, Google faced a $57 million fine under GDPR, which is the largest fine to date. There are other regulations and standards like PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC2, ISO/IEC 27701, and more that companies must follow to ensure data protection.

Disruption of Services

Identifying and remediating sensitive data exposure vulnerabilities is costly and time-consuming. Plus, a company’s business operations might be at a halt until the problem is fixed. It causes disruptions to services and inconvenience to users.

Financial Implications

A company may lose its business secrets that can help competitors surpass its growth or cause any other damage. Plus, heavy penalties will add insult to the injury with additional financial losses. If the company's data goes into the hands of cybercriminals, they can extort money.

Consequences for Common Users

Identity Theft

Probably, identity theft is the creepiest thing for users to face when their data is accidentally or purposely revealed. It is a form of crime in which a bad actor impersonates a person to do unauthorized transactions or commit fraud. It is a pure nightmare because an unknown person has control of a user’s data. It could cause significant reputational damage.

Cyber Bullying

It is an act of embarrassing, harassing, or threatening a person through aggressive, rude, or threatening messages, tweets, texts, or posts. Users can be subject to this kind of bullying owing to their race, color, creed, and more when their data is revealed.

Credential Misuse

If users' data goes into the hands of hackers, they can use it to access other services. For example, a user might be using the same password across different online services. As a result, the hacker can use stolen passwords to hijack other accounts.

Financial Loss

Users can be victims of cyber fraud, which can cause heavy financial losses. For example, when financial data such as credit card numbers are exposed, it can result in unauthorized transactions. In fact, there is a spike of 80% in digital frauds globally, as per a TransUnion report.

Common Sensitive Data Exposure Examples

Let’s check out common sensitive data exposure examples to implement security practices in an even better way.

1. Unencrypted Personal Data

Sensitive data such as social security numbers, credit card details, or health records stored without encryption can be accessible to anyone who gains access to the storage medium. This involves databases, files, or cloud storage.

2. Data Breaches

Unauthorized access to data is due to the exploitation of system vulnerabilities, insider threats, or hacking. Breaches often lead to sensitive data exposure to individuals or entities not authorized to view it.

3. Misconfigured Cloud Storage

Cloud storage services that are not correctly configured increase the chances of unauthorized public access to confidential files or other data. This generally occurs when access controls or permissions are not performed in a proper way.

4. Insecure Data Transmission

Private data transfer over unencrypted networks can be interpreted and read by unauthorized parties. This is especially dangerous with unencrypted HTTP connections instead of secure HTTPS.

5. Weak or Default Passwords

Systems or devices that are locked with easily guessable passwords or default credentials are vulnerable to unauthorized access. The likelihood of such systems’ exploitation is much higher.

6. Exposed Backup Data

Backup copies of confidential information that are not encrypted with robust security can be easily accessed by attackers if the backup storage is mishandled or compromised.

7. Unsecured APIs

APIs that lack strong authentication or authorization controls can inadvertently sanction unauthorized access to exploit the data. Especially those APIs that do not validate access permissions adequately. That’s why robust API security testing is a must for implementing strong authentication methods while sanctioning client requests.

Proven Tips to Prevent Sensitive Data Exposure Vulnerabilities

What can companies do to protect data and avoid accidental disclosure of critical information? Well, companies need to rethink their security mechanisms to meet this end. They must adopt a more proactive approach to security with continuous monitoring of the threat landscape. The following tips are helpful in this regard.

• Zero Trust Architecture: Adopt the philosophy of “trust no one, always verify” that provides another level of security. It emphasizes that there shouldn’t be an implicit trust and that every device, user, application, and transaction must be verified or authenticated before granting access to the company’s digital assets.
• Patching Software: Keeping your server, OS, and other software updated will help to prevent most cybersecurity issues. Such updates help you avoid sensitive data exposure vulnerabilities that cause security loopholes.
• Control Human Error: With proper awareness and regular training, you can minimize the risk of human error. Besides, create a security-first culture, encourage reporting, and maintain a standard protocol for processes.
• Security Testing: Perform regular security testing to discover vulnerabilities that are silent killers in your web application. You can leverage a reliable web app security scanner to automatically identify and get a report of these vulnerabilities.

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To Wrap Up

Securing sensitive data like PII is not just an organizational requirement but also a legal requirement for companies. Indeed, various legal implications and penalties compel companies to take proactive measures to protect data.

Periodic security audits are useful in this aspect. They help to discover security loopholes across your digital landscape by scanning web apps and APIs for vulnerabilities. Your company can leverage a vulnerability assessment tool like ZeroThreat.

It is a next-gen security testing tool that can help you discover a wide range of vulnerabilities, whether known or hard to detect. It identifies vulnerabilities with zero false positives with its AI-powered crawler. Give it a shot for free to unravel security risks.