The Breach

The Breach refers to the breach of the Lavawall firewall system of the Palisade Blades in 2028 due to the actions of Adam Jensen and ShadowChild. As a result of the Breach, massive amounts of data stored in the Palisade Blades, which were reputedly the most secure data-archiving facilities in the world, became accessible to hackers, particularly the type of hackers known as Rippers.

The Breach is created during the events of the System Rift DLC for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The game mode Breach explores the role of a Ripper taking advantage of the Breach to extract data from the Blade servers.

Background
The Palisade Bank Corporation's Palisade Blades are data-archiving facilities that use an advanced firewall system designed by Masaaki Oshiro called the "Lavawall." The Lavawall uses artificial intelligence to attack hackers who try to infiltrate the Blades. As an addition measure against hackers, Masaaki Oshiro has hired assassins to assassinate hackers that might pose a threat to the Blades' security system.

According to Palisade, the Lavawall is the only firewall in the world that no hacker has managed to breach. Due to the high degree of security afforded by the Blades, and the fact that data stored in the Blades are beyond the legal jurisdiction of any government, many corporations have opted to utilize the facilities to store private data.

Cause
The Lavawall is finally breached when Adam Jensen physically infiltrates Palisade Blade-01 on the request of Francis Pritchard, who has been seeking data stored on the Blade on behalf of David Sarif. While infiltrating the Blades, Jensen inserts a reprogrammed Pass-Port that allows Pritchard to access to the Blade's mainframe through NSN. Unfortunately, Pritchard's avatar is spotted by the Blade's AI core, which traps Pritchard's avatar in the server. To rescue Pritchard's avatar to prevent it from being traced, Jensen uses an NSN terminal to enter the Blade's servers.

While Jensen is in the NSN chair, ShadowChild uses Jensen's infolink connection to hack into the Palisade Blade's network. In order to bypass the Blade's AI virtual defenses guarding the mainframe, ShadowChild creates a hole in the Blade's outer defenses and invites some of her Ripper associates to attack the client servers of the Blade, thereby distracting the AI defenses from the mainframe. This process results in the creation of the Breach.

Aftermath
As a result of the Breach, Rippers all over the world began attacking the Palisade Blade servers day and night. ShadowChild tells Jensen that the creation of the Breach was a significant accomplishment toward exposing the secrets of the corporations. Pritchard, however, is upset that what was supposed to be a covert operation had escalated into a major incident.While the Breach is open, Rippers extract innumerable terabytes of data from the Blade servers. Corporate secrets exposed by data extracted from the Blades include VersaLife's role in faking the death of a six-year-old leukemia patient who was receiving experimental nanotechnology therapy at the Roccasecca Beach VersaLife facility, Steiner-Bisley's experiments in using biomass, including human corpses, to power robots, and Santeau's apparent inability to accommodate the amount of people who have paid to settle at Rabi'ah.

After rumors of the Breach spread, some of Palisade's clients, such as the Picus Group, pulled their data from the Palisade Blades.