Analyst B has discovered multiple attempts from unauthorized users to access confidential data.

Multiple attempts by unauthorized users to access confidential data most closely aligns with activity from a hacker, meaning an unauthorized actor attempting to gain access to systems or information. Cybersecurity operations commonly observe this pattern as repeated login failures, password-spraying, credential-stuffing, brute-force attempts, repeated probing of restricted endpoints, or abnormal access requests against protected repositories. While “user” is too generic and could include authorized individuals, the question explicitly states “unauthorized users,” pointing to malicious or illegitimate actors. “Admin” and “IT Support” are roles typically associated with legitimate privileged access and operational troubleshooting; repeated unauthorized access attempts from those roles would be atypical and would still represent compromise or misuse rather than normal operations. Cybersecurity documentation often classifies these attempts as indicators of malicious intent and potential precursor events to a breach. Controls recommended to counter such activity include strong authentication (multi-factor authentication), account lockout and throttling policies, anomaly detection, IP reputation filtering, conditional access, least privilege, and monitoring of authentication logs for patterns across accounts and geographies. The key distinction is that repeated unauthorized attempts represent hostile behavior by an external or rogue actor, which is best described as a hacker in the provided options.