Previous data breach literature has overlooked the importance of top management security perception and awareness and how top management can collaborate with the board to improve security outcomes for the firm. Adopting the upper echelon theory, we propose that top management security awareness reduces data breach events in the firm. Moreover, we will examine whether board-level IT governance moderates top management security awareness and data breach relations. We will use a fixed linear probability model to test our hypotheses on the panel data of 12 years (2010- 2021). Our research will contribute to both data breach and IT governance literature.