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Meaning & use

data breach

noun·Everydaycomputing

Last updated

UK/ˈdeɪtə briːtʃ/
US/ˈdeɪtə briːtʃ/

Meaning

  1. nouncountable

    An incident in which private or protected information is seen, taken or exposed by someone without permission.

    Grammar: Countable: a data breach, two data breaches.

    Patterns

    • a data breach at something
    • suffer a data breach
    • report a data breach

    The company reported a data breach affecting two million customers.

    After the data breach, users were told to change their passwords.

    A lost laptop caused the data breach at the clinic.

Word forms

pluraldata breaches

Common combinations

suffer a data breach
The retailer suffered a data breach last spring.
report a data breach
Companies must report a data breach within seventy-two hours.
major data breach
A major data breach exposed email addresses and passwords.
investigate a data breach
Experts were hired to investigate the data breach.
data breach notification
Customers received a data breach notification by email.

Synonyms and how they differ

data leak
A data leak often means information escaped through carelessness, while a breach suggests a security defense was broken.
hack
A hack is an intrusion by someone using computer skills, and is only one way a data breach can happen.
security incident
Security incident is a broader term for any security problem, whether or not data is exposed.

Word family

breach noun
a gap or a violation of a rule or defense
breach verb
to break through or break a rule
data noun
facts or information stored or used
databreach notification noun
a message telling people their data was exposed

Commonly confused: data breach or breech? data breach or hack?

data breach vs breech

Breech is a different word that refers to the back part of a gun or a birth position, and has no connection with data breach.

data breach vs hack

A hack is the act of breaking into a system, whereas a data breach is the outcome in which data is exposed.

Practice

After the ____, the bank told customers to change their passwords because hackers had copied their details.

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