Whether you've experienced a breach or not, it is always a good idea to be prepared and educated. This article covers the three main areas to focus on after the event of an attack.

There are a lot of articles out there that warn you about the countless data breaches, but we’ve noticed that there isn’t enough information to help you in the recovery process after you’ve experience one for yourself. It has been said a thousand times, but we’re going to say it again; no infrastructure is 100% secure. It’s impossible to be invincible but of course there are ways to minimize the risks. We won’t focus on that today but feel free to educate yourself on some basic safety guidelines in one of our previous articles.

The following list is a brief overview of steps companies have taken after experiencing a data breach:

1) Find the root cause

Discovering the vulnerability points is key to understanding how the breach occurred. Have your IT department, or hired IT company, perform a scan of your environment in order to identify where the breach occurred, identify other potential weak spots, and decrease the likelihood of another incident. If the breach occurred due to employee negligence, it’s possible that employee awareness training needs to occur. In this case, conducting an office wide mandatory safety protocol training would be well advised. This is usually something that your IT provider can perform.

For more information on the importance of internal customized training for your employees, click here.

2) Legal Obligations

After you clarify and understand the technical details of the occurrence, it’s time to tackle the legality portion of data breach recovery. If necessary, check to see what your state and federal obligatory protocols are, and notify your company’s legal representative. If your customer’s data has been breached, it is your responsibility to properly communicate with them what happened, what you’re doing about the problem and how you’re accommodating those who were effected. If you have an IT department or resource, they will know the legal protocols that should take place.

3) Be Pro-active

In most cases, companies that experience data breaches undergo client loss and a decrease of incoming business following the event. If you can provide your current customers with a special offer or somehow reimburse them for their loss, it would be an important time to do so. Amplifying your marketing and sale tactics in order to maintain your pipeline could be an impactful factor at this point. It is important to be transparent with your customers and include them in the process along the way in order to maintain their trust.

In the future, implement periodic IT security audits into your schedule and budget in order to stay ahead of any potential weak points in your environment. Getting a Response Plan in place will help you to better mitigate the situation in the event of a secondary attack.

It is important to remember that each cyberattack incident, company and response plan will vary. The steps above are the shortened and consolidation results of professional opinions.

If your business has experienced a data breach and you need an environmental scan or audit services, please contact us for a free consultation.

References:
https://www.techinsurance.com/resources/customer-education/checklists/recover-from-data-breach/
http://www.returncustomer.com/to-do-after-a-data-breach/
https://digitalguardian.com/blog/data-breach-experts-share-most-important-next-step-you-should-take-after-data-breach-2014-2015