PII covers information that identifies people, making its collection, storage, and disclosure central to privacy protection and breach response.
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Background for this topic.
PII (personally identifiable information) is information that identifies a person directly or can do so when combined with other data. Direct identifiers include names, government identification numbers, passport details, and email addresses; indirect identifiers can include birth dates, precise location, or unique account attributes. The term is used broadly in security, but its legal scope varies: laws and regulations may use different definitions, such as “personal data” under the GDPR or protected health information under HIPAA.
PII is a high-value target because unauthorized access or disclosure can enable identity fraud, targeted phishing, or privacy harm. It may be exposed through compromised applications, cloud storage, logs, endpoints, or third parties. Practitioners should inventory and classify it, collect and retain only what is needed, restrict access, and protect it with encryption or tokenization where appropriate. Monitoring and tested procedures for investigating exposure are important, while retention, deletion, and notification duties depend on the applicable jurisdiction and sector.
Weekly headline count for the current query.
Four newly discovered attack paths could lead to PII exposure, account takeover, even organizational data destruction.
A developer appears to have divulged credentials to a police database on a popular developer forum, leading to a breach and subsequent bid to sell 23 terabytes of personal data on the dark web.
A large-scale, automated typosquatting attack saw 200+ malicious packages flood the npm code repository, targeting popular Azure scopes.
A pair of bugs in the Snap-owned tracking app reveal phone numbers and allow account hijacking.
The Conti gang breached the cookware giant's network, prepping thousands of employees’ personal data for consumption by cybercrooks.
An oversight in a WordPress plug-in exposes PII and authentication data to malicious insiders.