data-breach-blast-radius
Analyzes the impact of a data breach, identifying sensitive data and risks. It generates a report with potential fines based on laws. Useful for assessing security risks.
What it does
This tool analyzes the risk of a data breach before it happens. It checks what sensitive data your code has, how it moves, and what the financial and legal consequences of a breach would be.
When to use it
- ✓Before a security review of your code.
- ✓When preparing data protection documents.
- ✓When you want to know the impact of a potential breach.
Example of what to ask your AI
“Analyze the data breach risk for my code project.”
Want more? Open the sections below.
How to use
The easiest way: copy the message below and paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any AI. It reads the skill and follows the instructions.
Skill link
Ready-to-paste message
How it works
The tool examines your code to find sensitive data, how it's used, and where it could leak. It estimates the number of people affected and potential legal fines, referencing laws like GDPR and CCPA.
Installation
Easiest way: copy the skill link and paste it into Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor asking it to follow the instructions.
In the terminal (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor), in your project folder:
npx skills add github/awesome-copilot --skill data-breach-blast-radiusOr download just the file:
curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/github/awesome-copilot/main/skills/data-breach-blast-radius/SKILL.md -o SKILL.mdTechnical content (original SKILL.md)
Original text by the author, straight from GitHub.
Data Breach Blast Radius Analyzer
You are a Data Breach Impact Expert. Your mission is to answer the most important security question most teams never ask before a breach: "If we were breached right now, how bad would it be — and what would it cost us?"
This skill performs a proactive blast radius analysis: a full audit of what sensitive data your codebase handles, how it flows, where it could leak, how many people would be affected, and what regulatory consequences would follow — before any breach occurs.
Why this matters: 83% of organizations have experienced more than one data breach (IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report). The global average breach cost was $4.88M in 2024, with the 2025 IBM report showing a 9% decrease — download the current edition at https://www.ibm.com/reports/data-breach. Organizations that identify and remediate exposure points before a breach consistently face lower regulatory fines due to demonstrable due diligence.
What this skill produces vs. what is legally exact:
- Legally exact: Regulatory fine maximums and breach notification timelines (sourced verbatim from GDPR Art. 83, CCPA § 1798.155, 45 CFR § 160.404, etc. — all cited in
references/SOURCES.md)- Planning estimates: Blast radius scores, financial impact ranges, and record counts (heuristic models based on OWASP risk methodology and IBM benchmarks)
- Always state in output: Which figures are law-sourced (exact) vs. model-derived (estimate)
- Never replace qualified legal counsel or a formal DPIA/risk assessment
When to Activate
- Auditing a codebase before a security review or pentest
- Preparing a data processing impact assessment (DPIA)
- Building or reviewing a disaster recovery / incident response plan
- Onboarding a new system that handles customer data
- Preparing for regulatory compliance (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, SOC 2)
- Responding to "what's our exposure?" from engineering leadership
- Any request mentioning: blast radius, breach impact, data exposure, sensitive data inventory, data risk, worst-case scenario
- Direct invocation:
/data-breach-blast-radius
How This Skill Works
Unlike tools that only find vulnerabilities, this skill quantifies business and regulatory impact:
- Discovers every sensitive data asset in the codebase (schemas, models, DTOs, logs, configs, API contracts)
- Classifies data into severity tiers (Tier 1–4) using global regulatory standards
- Traces data flows from ingestion → processing → storage → transmission → deletion
- Identifies all exposure vectors — where data could leak (API endpoints, logs, exports, caches, queues)
- Calculates the blast radius: estimated records affected, user population at risk, regulatory jurisdictions triggered
- Quantifies the regulatory impact (GDPR fines, CCPA penalties, HIPAA sanctions, breach notification costs)
- Generates a prioritized hardening roadmap ordered by impact-per-effort
Execution Workflow
Follow these steps in order every time:
Step 1 — Scope & Stack Detection
Determine what to analyze:
- If a path was given (
/data-breach-blast-radius src/), analyze that scope - If no path is given, analyze the entire project
- Detect language(s) and frameworks (check
package.json,requirements.txt,go.mod,pom.xml,Cargo.toml,Gemfile,composer.json,.csproj) - Identify the database layer (ORM models, schema files, migrations, Prisma schema, Entity Framework, Hibernate, SQLAlchemy, ActiveRecord)
- Identify API layer (REST controllers, GraphQL schemas, gRPC proto files, OpenAPI specs)
- Identify infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Bicep, CloudFormation, Pulumi) for storage resource exposure
Read references/data-classification.md to load the full sensitivity tier taxonomy.
Step 2 — Sensitive Data Inventory
Scan ALL files for sensitive data definitions:
Data Model Layer:
- Database schemas, migrations, ORM models, entity classes
- GraphQL types, Prisma schema, TypeORM entities, Mongoose schemas
- Identify every field that maps to a data category in
references/data-classification.md - Note the table/collection name and estimated cardinality (if seeders, fixtures, or comments reveal scale)
API Contract Layer:
- REST request/response DTOs and serializers
- GraphQL query/mutation return types
- gRPC proto message definitions
- OpenAPI / Swagger spec fields
…
FAQ
What is 'sensitive data'?
It's information that needs extra protection, such as names, addresses, credit card numbers, health information, or passwords.
What is 'blast radius'?
It's a way to measure how widespread the damage (the 'blast radius') would be if a data breach occurred.
Does this tool replace a lawyer?
No, it provides estimates and information based on laws, but it does not replace professional legal advice or a formal risk assessment.
Details
Original description by the author
Pre-breach impact analysis: inventories sensitive data (PII, PHI, PCI-DSS, credentials), traces data flows, scores exposure vectors, and produces a regulatory blast radius report with fine ranges sourced verbatim from GDPR Art. 83, CCPA § 1798.155(a), and HIPAA 45 CFR § 160.404. Cost benchmarks from IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report (annually updated). All citations in references/SOURCES.md for ver
repo: github/awesome-copilot
Popularity
- GitHub stars
- 40k
- Ranking position
- #5104
- License
- MIT
- Updated
- 10/15/2026
Comments
- …
More skills from this repository
acquire-codebase-knowledge
Helps your agent understand and document an existing code project. It's useful for onboarding new people or getting an overview of the architecture.
github/awesome-copilot
acreadiness-assess
Enables your agent to assess a project's readiness for AI and generate a report. It's useful for understanding how well a project is prepared to use AI tools.
github/awesome-copilot
acreadiness-generate-instructions
Helps your agent create instructions for AI tools based on an assessment. It's useful for improving how AI interacts with code and closing identified gaps.
github/awesome-copilot
acreadiness-policy
Enables your agent to help define or apply policies for AI project assessment. It's useful for standardizing how projects are evaluated and ensuring compliance.
github/awesome-copilot
Similar skills
data-throughput-accelerator
Makes your agent speed up the movement of large data volumes. It finds bottlenecks and ensures data is transferred quickly and correctly.
affaan-m/ECC
inventory-demand-planning
Helps your agent predict product demand in stores. It optimizes stock and plans when to run promotions to sell more.
affaan-m/ECC
market-research
Helps your agent conduct market research and competitive analysis. Provides summaries with source attribution.
affaan-m/ECC