SECAI Core · phase 11 of 15 · noun
Data breach
When confidential or private data is read, copied, or changed without authorization. Data breach events may have notification and reporting requirements.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- A data breach is confidential or private data being read, copied, or changed without authorization. Beyond the technical damage, breaches often trigger legal notification and reporting duties.
- Example
- A misconfigured storage bucket holding an AI company's chat logs is left public. Customer conversations, including pasted medical details, are downloaded by strangers, and regulators must be notified.
- Why it matters
- AI systems concentrate sensitive data: prompts, logs, and training sets. Defenders treat all of it as breach-worthy, minimize retention, and have a response plan ready before it is needed.
- Hook
- Data walked out, and now the lawyers walk in.
Word knowledge
How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.
In a sentence
The incident response team confirmed a data breach after firewall logs showed an external account downloading the model-training archive.
Why these words
- data Latin data, things given identifies the material involved
- breach Middle English breche, a break or opening names the security event affecting that material
Where it came from
- Origin
- an English compound combining data, from Latin datum, with breach, from Old English bræc through Middle English breche
- Entered the language
- 1980s
- What changed
- Data developed from given facts into a mass noun for digitally stored information, while breach expanded from a physical break to a violation of rules, trust, or security.
How it is spelled
- Pattern
- It is written as an open compound with a space between two nouns.
- Pattern
- In breach, ea represents the long e sound.
Spelled like
- security breach
- data center
- beach
- teach
Broken into chunks
-
data
- database
- metadata
-
breach
- breached
- breaching
What it sits beside
Same subject
- incident response
- data exfiltration
- access control
- breach notification
Same shape
- security breach
- data leak
- privacy breach
security incidents
- data breach
- ransomware attack
- account compromise
incident response activities
- detection
- containment
- notification
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 11: Threat Landscape: Attack Vectors and Adversarial Techniques
With defences named, learn what they must defend against — the full catalogue of attack techniques targeting AI systems, their inputs, outputs, training pipelines, and supply chains.
