Cybersecurity For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 12

Identifying a Security Breach

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding why it’s critical to know if you were breached

Identifying overt and covert breaches

Recognizing various symptoms of covert breaches

Despite valiant efforts to protect your computer systems and data, you may suffer some sort of breach. In fact, the odds that your data will — at some point — be somehow breached by someone are close to 100 percent. The only real question is whether the breach will take place on a device or network that you operate, one that is owned and operated by someone else, or both.

Because you’re ultimately responsible for maintaining your own computer systems, you need to be able to recognize the typical signs of a potential breach occurring of your equipment. If a hacker does manage to penetrate your systems, you need to terminate the attacker’s access as quickly as possible. If your data has been manipulated or destroyed, you need to restore an accurate copy within a reasonable amount of time. If systems are malfunctioning, you need to stop them from performing inappropriate activities and get them back on track to deliver service as expected.

In this chapter, you learn about the typical ...