Enterprise data breach: causes, challenges, prevention, and future directions

TLDR

Data breaches, the intentional or accidental exposure of confidential information, threaten enterprises with reputational damage, financial loss, and growing risks as data volumes expand and incidents rise, making detection and prevention a critical security priority. The review surveys enterprise data leak threats, recent incidents, and emerging challenges. It also examines state‑of‑the‑art prevention and detection techniques and promising solutions. Published in WIREs Data Mining Knowledge Discovery 2017 (doi:10.1002/widm.1211).

Abstract

A data breach is the intentional or inadvertent exposure of confidential information to unauthorized parties. In the digital era, data has become one of the most critical components of an enterprise. Data leakage poses serious threats to organizations, including significant reputational damage and financial losses. As the volume of data is growing exponentially and data breaches are happening more frequently than ever before, detecting and preventing data loss has become one of the most pressing security concerns for enterprises. Despite a plethora of research efforts on safeguarding sensitive information from being leaked, it remains an active research problem. This review helps interested readers to learn about enterprise data leak threats, recent data leak incidents, various state‐of‐the‐art prevention and detection techniques, new challenges, and promising solutions and exciting opportunities. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2017, 7:e1211. doi: 10.1002/widm.1211 This article is categorized under: Application Areas > Business and Industry Fundamental Concepts of Data and Knowledge > Key Design Issues in Data Mining Technologies > Prediction