University Database Security: Risks, Impacts, and Industry Analysis

This report delves into the critical realm of database security, examining the significant impact of data breaches across various sectors, including military, healthcare, and IT. The analysis highlights the substantial consequences of security breaches, which encompass financial losses, reputational damage, and the compromise of sensitive information. The report provides real-world examples, such as breaches within the U.S. Department of Defense and the healthcare industry, illustrating the vulnerability of data in today's digital landscape. It emphasizes the importance of robust security measures to protect against cyber threats, detailing the industries most susceptible to attacks and the potential for data leakage to competitors. The report underscores the necessity for organizations to implement comprehensive strategies to safeguard their systems, financial integrity, and operational continuity against the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats. The report concludes by referencing relevant research on the economic effects of data breaches and the spread of stolen data.

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The impact of a security breach is very high and can have a massive impact on the
confidentiality and integrity of the data. The breach causes a leak which exposes the
company’s information and data and causes massive losses to the integrity of the company.
Such incidents also cause public humiliations and financial losses. A few of the breaches can
even lead to a loss of property, money and operating systems for the company. Even though
these losses are also substantial, the information loss that occurs due to such breaches are far
more dangerous for the operation of the affected organisation. These information that are
exposed or leaked due to a data breach may contain information that can be helpful to a
potential business competitor and can weaken the functional and confidentiality structure of
the affected company against such external threats and competitors. The organisations that
are affected by such data breaches generally have their systems, financial and operation’s
integrity comprised. The major effects of such breaches on various different fields are
discussed in the next paragraph.
In the military field, the United States Department of Defence or the DoD suffered a
massive data breach that left a huge volume of their secret intelligence data completely
exposed on a public server which can be easily accessed by anyone. Almost 100 GB of
intelligence data was leaked and stored on a publicly accessible amazon web services cloud
storage server. “This is the first time that clearly classified information has been among the
exposed data” said the UpGuard cyber security team who were investigating the breach. In
the medical or healthcare field, thousands of hospitals were affected by the ransomware virus
and the phishing emails to steal huge amounts of critical data and also extort millions of
dollars of money. The Catawba valley hospital lost 20000 patient records due to 3 phishing
attacks and the federal ACA portal was breach that led to data loss of 75000 patients. Such
attacks has increasingly become common nowadays.

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In the information technology field which is one of the worst affected industry, a
company called Bitglass reported that a stolen document was send to 22 different countries
and was viewed more than thousand times and downloaded over 47 times over a period of
twelve days. This shows the popularity and the extent of the data breach attacks that is
occurring globally. "Every time a user opened the file, we got a ping back that we could
record in our logs, saying this file was opened at this time" said Nat Kaushik who is the CEO
of Campbell. The five main industries that are the most prone to such cyber security attacks
are the health care industry, the manufacturing industry, the financial services or the banking
sector, the governments of various countries and the logistics or transportation industries.
These industries are the worst affected out of all the data breach attacks and has a probability
of 80% to be beached by some hackers and need urgent security measures against such
attacks.

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References
Confente, I., Siciliano, G. G., Gaudenzi, B., & Eickhoff, M. (2019). Effects of data breaches
from user-generated content: A corporate reputation analysis. European Management
Journal.
Makridis, C., & Dean, B. (2018). Measuring the economic effects of data breaches on firm
outcomes: Challenges and opportunities. Available at SSRN 3044726.
The biggest healthcare data breaches of 2018 (so far). (2019). Retrieved from
https://www.healthcareitnews.com/projects/biggest-healthcare-data-breaches-2018-
so-far
Where Stolen Data Goes After Breach: An Experiment (2019). Retrieved from
https://www.investors.com/news/technology/bitglass-experiment-shows-how-stolen-
data-gets-into-criminal-hands-after-breach/

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