Data Leakage Risk
Data Leakage Risk
Data leakage risk refers to the potential for sensitive or confidential information to be unintentionally or maliciously disclosed outside of an organization, leading to potential harm to the organization's reputation, finances, or legal standing.
A data breach is a security violation, in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen, altered or used by an individual unauthorized to do so. Other terms are unintentional information disclosure, data leak, information leakage and data spill. - Data Breach, Wikipedia
In the past, many financial firms have prohibited the use of social media and sharing sites in order to mitigate the risk of data leakage. However, it is important to balance the risk of data leakage against the benefits of using these sites.
This raises the question of whether employees can use sites like GitHub, where uploading data is commonplace, while still having controls in place to mitigate data leakage.
Example: According to ZD Net in 2019 hundreds of thousands of GitHub repos have leaked cryptographic keys.
Example: A notable example of a code leak occurred in July 2020, when source code for several high-profile Nintendo video games and internal development tools were leaked online. This leak, dubbed the "Gigaleak," contained source code, prototypes, and assets for various popular games such as Super Mario Kart, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Super Mario World, among others.