PII covers information that identifies people, making its collection, storage, and disclosure central to privacy protection and breach response.
Search across headline titles and summaries.
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.
LummaC2, a C-based MaaS tool first identified in 2022, has resurfaced to exfiltrate credentials and personal data
Prompt injection, ASCII smuggling, and other swashbuckling attacks on the horizon Microsoft has fixed flaws in Copilot that allowed attackers to steal users' emails and other personal data by chaining together a series of LLM-specific attacks, beginning with prompt injection.…
Young Consulting Says Health Data Exposed; Ransomware Group Leaked Stolen DataYoung Consulting, which develops software for the stop-loss insurance market, is notifying 1 million individuals that their personal information was stolen earlier this year in a hack attack. The BlackSuit ransomware group, a rebrand of Royal, subsequently claimed credit and leaked stolen data.
The Texas Dow Employees Credit Union told the Maine Attorney General the MOVEit data breach compromised information of over 500,000 members
Patelco Credit Union warns customers it suffered a data breach after personal data was stolen in a RansomHub ransomware attack earlier this year. [...]
The Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) has fined Uber a record €290 million ($324 million) for allegedly failing to comply with European Union (E.U.) data protection standards when sending sensitive driver data to the U.S