Web Security

Data Exfiltration

Data exfiltration is the unauthorized movement of sensitive or confidential information from within an organization's network to an external location, often controlled by attackers or malicious actors.

Data exfiltration is a critical threat for organizations and an urgent concern in cybersecurity. This attack can occur through internal and external threats:

Internal threats: users inside your organization who use their authorized access, intentionally or unintentionally, to compromise your organization's network, data, or devices.An authorized employee with access to the company system.
External threats: risks from outside the network that gain access and go beyond the organization's security perimeter.

Common Data Exfiltration Methods

Here are some examples of common techniques for data exfiltration:

Human Error
Insider Threat Uploads to External Device
Social Engineering (and Phishing Attacks)

Data Leakage vs. Data Exfiltration

The terms data leakage and data exfiltration are used interchangeably. However, they have a backbone difference:

Data leakage refers to any data exposure originating from security fragilities or vulnerabilities. Exfiltrating data involves the removal or retrieval of data through intentional malicious activity. In data exfiltration scenarios, cyberattackers copy or transfer data to another location. In other words, a data leak can lead to planned exfiltration. Why?

vs.

Data exfiltration occurs when data is stolen. It implies moving information from an organization's perimeter to the outside without permission. Data leaks involve the exposure of sensitive data to unapproved parties.

Data Exfiltration Attack examples and incidents

These are two examples of incidents of data exfiltration that happened in the last six years:

Affected organization	SunTrust Bank Data Breach
Incident type	Data Exfiltration by an Insider: April 2018
Description	1.5 million customer data stolen (potentially). An insider perpetrated the data breach. Goal: Print the data and share it with a criminal third party.

Affected organization

MOVEit

Incident type

Supply Chain Attack: 2023

Description

According to Emsisoft:

Nearly 500 organizations and 24 million individuals have been exposed to the mass exploitation of the MOVEit vulnerability.
At least 136 organizations that don’t use MOVEit directly were exposed via third-party vendors.

Data exfiltration can involve the theft of the following types of information:

Login credentials.
Confidential enterprise data, including intellectual property
Personal information about employees, clients, or suppliers
Decryption keys for encrypted information
Financial data like bank account details and credit card numbers

How to prevent Data Exfiltration with Webpage Integrity?

Prevent the exfiltration of data inserted into forms with automatic and continuous protection. We can be your partner in ensuring client-side security. How can we help you prevent data exfiltration?

Our data security solution takes a comprehensive and proactive approach to safeguarding sensitive information. The goal is to stay one step ahead of data exfiltration techniques. Therefore, this solution involves several things, namely:

Threat detection and alerts from day one

Implement advanced monitoring and detection mechanisms to identify unusual or unauthorized data transfer patterns. Also, threat detection allows us to identify and prioritize the events and users that pose the most problematic risks.

Control script behavior

Use data to monitor user and system behavior and detect and control script behaviors in real-time. Misconfigurations or behaviors may indicate data exfiltration attempts.

Security reports and audits

Provide a report with identified issues, recommended actions, and actions taken to mitigate potential data exfiltration incidents, minimizing the impact on the organization.

In summary, preventing and mitigating data extraction techniques is a complicated task. The prevention process demands dealing with malicious attackers and negligent employees.

Implement cybersecurity best practices and use security measures to overcome potential vulnerabilities.

How Jcrambler can help you

Have questions or want more information about how to protect your business from data exfiltration?

Get in touch today!