Every day, an absurd amount of new data breaches appear online. On top of that, old breaches still circulate, often easily accessible – both for free and for a fee – and they can pose a real threat to your company.

Attacks using what are known as “creds” (from credentials), i.e., login:password pairs (email:password) leaked from various services, are now everyday occurrences. In most cases, these attacks could have been prevented – all it takes is breach monitoring and a quick, effective response before someone else uses those credentials. And there’s no shortage of interested parties: APT groups, script-kiddies, bots (yes, these data are also automatically collected and verified), or even competitors. And that’s not the full list.

So, how can you protect yourself? The answer is active data breach monitoring.

Monitoring is a service that involves scanning the internet, dark web, various forums, and Telegram groups, etc. – both public and private – to detect exposed login data associated with a company or domain. With continuous monitoring, we can quickly detect a breach before it’s used to hijack accounts, steal company data, or launch ransomware attacks.

This approach allows for fast responses to potential threats and minimizes the risk of stolen data being used.

Differences Between Tools and Active Monitoring

Most data breaches remain unknown for a long time, and once exposed, they never disappear from the internet. Importantly, you can’t always rely on popular tools like Have I Been Pwned, which aggregate breach data. From experience, we know that many breaches never make it there at all, and those that do often arrive with significant delays, by which time they may already have been exploited.

How Do Company Data End Up on the Internet?

One source is, of course, direct breaches and leaks associated with the compromise of an organization. Another problem is employees using their company email addresses for personal purposes – a big mistake primarily due to a lack of awareness of the risks. Especially when they store their passwords in the browser instead of using a password manager (though even that doesn't solve all problems), making them an easy target – but this is just one method. It only takes visiting a bad website, clicking the wrong link, failing to update an application or system – and even if everything is up to date, there are still 0-day vulnerabilities. All of this happens in the background, without the user's knowledge.

What connects all data breaches? Regardless of the source – they circulate across the internet – and this is where we can shine and help organizations by collecting and analyzing that data.

Data breach monitoring - unshade.pl

Our data monitoring service is comprehensive and always fully tailored to your organization's needs.

Quick Response – minimizing the impact of a breach before it can be exploited.
Proactive Security – continuous monitoring of breaches and threats.
Threat Awareness – detecting not just passwords, but also other data associated with your company.
Combination of Automation and Manual Analysis with an emphasis on manual review.
Verification and recommendations for corrective actions once something is detected.

Summary

Data breaches are a threat that affects every organization, even if you’re convinced your data is safe. There are plenty of examples of attacks that begin with a data breach, and even more common are cases where data from breaches is used during the attack to escalate privileges or move laterally within infrastructure. Early detection of data breaches gives you an advantage in the fight against "cybercriminals" before they can exploit the stolen information.