Uncertified software and neural networks: the NCPD called the main causes of information leakage

About 50 notifications of information security incidents related to the processing of personal data were received by the National Center for Personal Data Protection in 2026. And most of these incidents are not related to technical hacks, but to the actions of employees. This information was announced by the director of the National Center for Personal Data Protection Andrey Gaev today, November 11, at a press presentation in the National Press Center.

In just five years, the center has received about 150 incident notifications. Only 20 per cent of them were leaks, indicating that organizations were effective in protecting their information resources. The reasons for most of the leaks were the use of uncertified software, remote work of employees through unprotected communication channels, the use of personal computers infected with viruses by employees.

This year, another one appeared in the top causes of data leakage – uploading significant data sets to ChatGPT and similar services running on artificial intelligence technologies. Organizations face cases when employees upload large amounts of information to such systems without assessing the possible consequences of transferring data to external services.

Also, not all incidents involve leaks. Part of the notification concerns the loss or deletion of information when the information becomes unavailable to the organization.

At the same time, not every report about the alleged leak is confirmed, Andrei Gaev noted:

- Today, many things that are positioned by attackers as an incident are actually compiled information from previously stolen information and modified with the help of artificial intelligence, and sometimes such statements are completely fake. Therefore, the National Center for Personal Data Protection and law enforcement agencies are deeply investigating every circumstance to establish whether there was a personal data breach or a breach of information infrastructure.

Every third crime in Belarus is committed in cyberspace gorbatenko@sb.by