Assignment:

Visit PrivacyRights.org to see the types of publicly available information about data breaches.  How might researchers use this information to study breaches?  Enter a paragraph in your Journal.

Answer:

In this journal I will explain how researchers might use publicly available information about data breaches, to study said breaches.

Researchers might use information about a breach to figure out how to prevent said breach. For example if a computer gets infected by malware, researchers might look into what the malware attacks, or if the malware is tracking any keyboard inputs or mouse movements, and try to figure out how to remove the malware or protect whatever is being attacked.

This doesn’t only apply to cyberspace but also in real life. For example losing, discarding or having sensitive paper documents stolen. Researchers might look into what paper documents are most likely to be stolen, how they are stolen, and through this they can find out how to best protect the documents. Researchers might also research how papers are lost or discarded and might make a plan and teach employees on how to best keep track, or discard paper documents.

No matter what kind of a data breach occurs, researchers are probably going to try and find out how said breach happened and in what way the breach can best be resolved and then how to best impede breaches, like the ones resolved, in the future.