How to Check if Your Business Data Was Breached

For organizations in Canada and the United States, determining whether corporate credentials have been compromised is no longer a periodic exercise. It is an ongoing operational requirement. Breach databases grow continuously, and the presence of a corporate domain in those databases often precedes unauthorized access attempts by days or weeks.

The challenge is that organizations are rarely the direct target. In most cases, credential exposure results from third-party breaches. An employee uses their work email to sign up for a SaaS tool, that tool is breached, and the corporate email address and password are now in a breach database. The organization's own systems were never compromised, but the credentials provide a path into them.

Domain-Level Breach Checks

The most effective approach for organizations is a domain-level scan. Rather than checking individual email addresses one at a time, a domain scan searches breach databases for every credential associated with the corporate domain. This surfaces exposures across the entire organization, including accounts that current employees may not remember creating and accounts from former employees that were never deactivated.

A domain-level scan typically returns results organized by breach event: which service was breached, when it occurred, how many organizational accounts were affected, and what data types were included. This structure enables prioritized response, as a breach that exposed plaintext passwords requires more urgent action than one that included only email addresses and hashed credentials.

Beyond Email: Infrastructure Exposure

Credential checks are one dimension of organizational exposure. A comprehensive assessment also examines the external infrastructure: SSL certificate configurations, DNS records, exposed services, mail server security, and code repositories. External attack surface management platforms combine credential monitoring with infrastructure scanning to provide a complete picture of what an external observer, or an adversary, can see about the organization.

Infrastructure exposure matters because misconfigured services can be exploited independently of stolen credentials. An expired SSL certificate, an open directory listing, or a misconfigured mail server can each provide entry points or information that supports further attacks. Assessing both credential and infrastructure exposure provides a more accurate view of organizational risk.

Interpreting Results

Finding corporate credentials in breach databases is common. The question is not whether any exposure exists, but how to assess its severity and respond appropriately. Key factors include: the age of the breach, the types of data exposed, whether passwords were hashed or plaintext, whether multi-factor authentication was enabled on the affected accounts, and whether the same passwords are still in use.

Recent breaches with plaintext passwords and no MFA represent the highest priority. Older breaches where passwords have since been changed and MFA has been enabled represent lower, though not zero, risk. Infostealer logs present particular concern because they may include session tokens and cookies that bypass password-based authentication entirely.

From Assessment to Monitoring

A one-time breach check answers the question of current exposure. But new breaches are disclosed regularly, and existing datasets are recombined and redistributed. Continuous monitoring transforms the assessment from a snapshot into an ongoing process, alerting the organization when new exposures are identified.

For organizations subject to PIPEDA or state-level privacy legislation, continuous monitoring supports compliance by demonstrating proactive security measures and enabling rapid response when breaches are detected. The ability to show a consistent monitoring history is evidence of reasonable security practices.