Author's note: Identifying the source of high profile data breaches

Running head: INFORMATION SECURITY AWARENESS
INFORMATION SECURITY AWARENESS
Name of student:
Name of university:
Author’s note:

INFORMATION SECURITY AWARENESS1
Answer of question 1:
Several news of data breaches that are high profile, which influences the corporate files that
are internal, sheds light on the severity of data breach, which impacts the personal
information of employee. The employers should prepare for any kind of data loss, and the
organisations must think about the planning for protecting business of the organisations and
the employees with the help of incorporation of the particular tactics in the response plan of
the data breach. The data breaches that are associated with the records of employees present a
specialised threat as the record of information that is maintained by the organisations are
considered to be sensitive (Vashisth et al.). If any employer of an organisation loses the data
of employees the impact on the employee can be considered as long term impact than the
impact of the loss of a credit card number that can lead to the fraudulent charges that can be
rectified with the issuer of card. The loss of usernames and the passwords by the employer
can lead to the overcome of the workarounds that are authentication based for accessing
several other information that is confidential. In addition to this, if the employee works for
any government department, then the loss of the information of the employee can allow any
unauthorised user in creating a duplicate ID for stealing the sensitive information of the
government, which includes trade secrets and the patents (Yeboah-Boateng and Ezer Osei).
The productivity that the organisation gains from the employees can be hampered due to the
loss of information by the employers. The files that are lost are very hard to retrieve, it can
take several days for recovering the data, and it can lead to the downtime of the staff and the
loss of significant amount of sales. The loss of information by the employers can lead to the
damage in the future of the employees and as the process of retrieval of the sensitive
information can take huge time and the retrieval of the complete data is not guaranteed
(Taylor et al.).

INFORMATION SECURITY AWARENESS2
Answer of question 2:
The impact of the loss of data by an organisation can result in various severe consequences.
The data breaches in the companies are increasing at a significant rate. The major impacts of
the loss of data in an organisation are as follows:
Damage to the reputation: The business of an organisation is majorly based on the
reputation of the company. The situation of a data breach in an organisation can damage the
companies severely. Even though the hack or breach in the organisation effects the
organisations in several methods, the companies often claim that the impact is negative
(Bressler and Martin). Prior to the introduction of internet, the recovery process of the
organisations were easier and the damage to the reputation was considerably lower but with
the introduction of internet, the news of any data breach spreads rapidly and the impact is
higher.
Decrease in the competitive ability: It is considered that the majority of the hackers are
interested in the proprietary information of the businesses, that includes the strategies of
pricing and the trade secrets. If the cybercriminals obtain these information, the
competitiveness of the company can be severely affected as these information can be sold to
the rival companies and the leaking of these information to the common public can also
happen (Li et al.). In addition to this effect, the competitive ability of the company will
decrease as the customers are likely to shift some other business partners.
Loss of trust of customers: The clients of companies share the confidential information
often with the businesses, with the assumption that the companies consists of the proper
measures of security placed for protecting the data of the customers. In the event of any data
breach, the questioning will be done by the customers about the trust that has been placed by
them in the company. Moreover, the customers believes that the company protect the