Why are threat actors faking data breaches?

Hackers may claim fake data breaches for various motives including profit, notoriety, distraction, damaging a firm’s reputation, manipulating stock prices, and understanding a company’s security setup. They use generative AI and online resources to produce realistic but fake data. To counteract this, companies should monitor the dark web, analyse old data for similarities, educate their staff, keep communication teams ready, deploy canary tokens, and use integrated security measures.