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.
The CHC remains operational, but a host of personal data is now in the hands of a "skilled cybercriminal," it said.
Italy's data protection watchdog has blocked Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek's service within the country, citing a lack of information on its use of users' personal data
Energy contractor ENGlobal reported that sensitive personal data was stolen by threat actors, with the incident disrupting operations for six weeks
Education software giant PowerSchool has started notifying individuals in the U.S. and Canada whose personal data was exposed in a late December 2024 cyberattack. [...]
One of the largest data breaches in history was apparently twice as impactful as previously thought, with PII belonging to hundreds of millions of people sitting in the hands of cybercriminals.