Breach notification
Definition
The legal obligation to inform regulators and affected individuals when personal data is compromised in a security incident. Timelines and thresholds differ by jurisdiction: 72 hours under GDPR, 60 days under HIPAA Breach Notification Rule for covered entities, and similar windows under the India DPDPA 2023.
Related terms
- Chain of custody
- The documented chronological record of who collected, handled, transferred, and examined a piece of evidence. For digital evidence, chain of custody includes...
- Dwell time
- The period between an attacker gaining initial access and their detection. Reducing dwell time is a primary goal of threat hunting. The...
- Forensic readiness
- The organisational state in which people, processes, and technology are prepared to collect and preserve digital evidence with minimum disruption to business...
- Incident response (IR)
- The organised methodology for handling and managing the aftermath of a security breach or cyberattack. IR encompasses preparation, detection, containment, eradication, recovery,...
- Incident ticket
- The structured record opened in an IT service management or case management system when an alert is escalated to an incident. It...
- Lessons-learned report
- A post-incident review document identifying what succeeded, what failed, the root cause, and specific recommended changes to policy, tooling, or training. Produced...
- Post-incident report
- The formal written account produced after an incident is closed. It synthesises the timeline log into a structured narrative covering the incident...
- Proportionality
- The legal principle, central to European human rights law and to many constitutional systems, that any interference with a fundamental right must...
- Timeline log
- A chronological, append-only record capturing every analyst action and finding during the response, time-stamped at the moment of entry in UTC. It...
Explained in these topics
- Incident Reporting and DocumentationThe legal obligation to inform regulators and affected individuals when personal data is compromised in a security incident. Timelines and thresholds differ by...
- Incident Response Goals and PrinciplesThe legal obligation, imposed by statutes such as the EU GDPR, India's DPDPA 2023, and US state laws, to notify regulators and affected individuals when person...