Cybersecurity incidents are events that threaten the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of information systems and data.

These incidents can be categorized into three major types: breaches, attacks, and data leaks.

A breach occurs when unauthorized individuals gain access to sensitive information, often exploiting vulnerabilities in security measures.

This could involve hackers infiltrating a corporate network to access customer data or an internal employee misusing access privilege.

Attacks, on the other hand, refer to overt efforts to disrupt or damage systems, such as denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that overwhelm a service with traffic, rendering it unusable.

Data leaks typically happen when sensitive data is unintentionally exposed or improperly shared, often due to human error or misconfigured security settings.

Understanding these categories lays the groundwork for an effective response plan tailored to the specific type of incident.