THREAT‑WATCH
Glossary
Data Breach
An incident in which sensitive, protected, or confidential data is accessed, disclosed, or stolen without authorization.
A data breach can result from external attack (hacking, ransomware), insider misuse, or simple misconfiguration (like an exposed cloud storage bucket). Under NIS2 and GDPR, breaches meeting certain severity thresholds must be reported to authorities within strict deadlines, which makes fast detection directly relevant to legal compliance, not just security.