A data leak is the accidental exposure of sensitive, protected or confidential information outside its intended environment. It can expose personal details, financial records or trade secrets to hackers and can lead to significant damage to reputation, loss of revenue and legal implications.
Many data leaks are the result of internal human errors, security vulnerabilities or poor data protection policies. Employees can accidentally expose confidential information by misplacing their USB drives, sharing it via email or text messages, or using unsecured printers. Alternatively, a misconfigured server can leave data exposed to attackers or a breached third party may exploit a vulnerability to gain unauthorized access and steal information.
Malicious insiders are also common causes of a data leak. These are current or former employees who gain unauthorized access to sensitive information and use it for their own personal gain, retribution or out of malice. This can be in the form of copying data to external storage devices or sharing it with competitors.
Adobe was involved in a massive data leak in 2021 when their password encryption key was published online, leaving 38 million of its customers vulnerable to identity theft. A hacker named Gnosticplayers used the leaked passwords to access popular games like Words with Friends, Farmville and Draw Something. Because so many people reuse the same passwords across services, the Adobe data leak was also a risk for other companies and platforms such as eBay, Spotify and Apple.
A data leak can also reveal strategic or commercially sensitive information to attackers and threaten a company’s future growth and success. This can include research and development projects, prototypes, documentation of scrapped or unfinished products, and source code. The most damaging of all leaks is a loss of intellectual property which can be sold or even reverse engineered by cybercriminals to gain a competitive advantage.