Data Breach
Definition
An incident in which an unauthorised party gains access to, copies, or discloses protected data. Breaches trigger specific legal notification requirements under laws such as GDPR (EU), state breach statutes (US), and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 (India).
- Definition
- Unauthorised access, copying, or disclosure of protected data
- EU law
- GDPR notification requirements
- US law
- State breach notification statutes
- India law
- Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023
Common questions
Does every unauthorised access incident legally qualify as a reportable data breach?+
Notification duties generally hinge on whether the accessed or disclosed data was protected personal data and whether the incident created a meaningful risk of harm, so an intrusion into a system with no personal data, or one blocked before any access occurred, typically falls under general incident response rather than breach notification law.
Why do investigators distinguish a data breach from a broader security incident?+
A security incident is any event threatening confidentiality, integrity, or availability of a system, while a data breach is the narrower subset involving actual unauthorised access or disclosure of protected data, and that distinction determines whether statutory notification clocks and specific legal obligations are triggered.
Related terms
- Alert
- A notification generated when an event or pattern of events matches a detection rule. Alerts require triage to determine whether they represent...
- Insider Threat
- An incident originating from a person with legitimate access to an organisation's systems, whether through malicious intent (data theft, sabotage) or negligence...
- Ransomware
- Malware that encrypts or exfiltrates data and demands payment for restoration or suppression. Modern ransomware incidents often combine an availability impact (encrypted...
- Security Event
- Any observable occurrence in a system or network. Events are the raw material from which alerts and incidents are identified; the vast...
- Security Incident
- An event or chain of events that violates an organisation's security policy or credibly threatens the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of information...