Digital Footprint
A digital footprint is the trail of data a person or organisation leaves online through browsing, social media, registrations, public records and transactions.
What is Digital Footprint?
Definition
Digital Footprint is the trail of data a person or organisation leaves behind online: browsing and search history, social media activity, registrations, public records, transactions, and everything published about them by other people. It divides into an active part, which is what you deliberately post, and a passive part, which is collected without any action on your side. It matters in cybersecurity because that trail is the raw material of targeted attacks — a convincing spear-phishing message or a plausible pretext is assembled from information the target published themselves.
Role in cybersecurity
Digital Footprint plays an important role in building organizational resilience against cyber threats. Implementing appropriate mechanisms in this area is required by regulations such as NIS2, DORA and ISO 27001.