A Simple Guide to Handling a Business Data Breach

A data breach—when a company’s sensitive data, from customer details to company secrets to financial information, is exposed—certainly isn’t a good thing for any business to experience. Once an organization knows it’s happening, it’s time to go into panic mode.

While this is an understandable response, it is crucial that you are prepared with a strategy to navigate such a situation should it ever arise.

Data Breaches Don’t Discriminate

If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a million times… “Really, what are the chances that my business here in North Carolina will actually be attacked?”

The answer: better than you think, and way too high to risk it.

First of all, a data breach doesn’t necessarily involve an intentional cyberattack. A laptop left unlocked in a coffee shop could facilitate a data breach. Essentially, if data is exposed, it is considered breached.

Secondly, there are significant consequences that come from an attack beyond just data leakage (even though this should be more than enough alone), which will likely result in your business suffering. Lost trust and reputation, regulatory fines, legal trouble, and more will all cost your business as well.

Adding these together, it should be aggressively clear that all businesses—including and especially yours—need to be prepared to avoid as many data breaches as possible. Even more crucially, you need to be ready to address any that could slip by these preparations.

Let’s laser in on the latter and address what needs to take place as soon as a breach happens.

Your Data Breach Response Plan

Step One: Containment

As soon as you suspect a breach has occurred, put any potentially affected devices in quarantine. Cut them off from the network to prevent an infection or intrusion from spreading. Unfortunately, most businesses don’t detect a breach until weeks or months after it begins.

Step Two: Assessment

Once you’re confident that there is no more threat of more data being breached, it’s time to put on your detective cap and figure out what data was burgled. Understanding what was breached—whether it was trade secrets, payment information, or personally identifiable info—will help inform your strategy moving forward and identify what corrective measures will need to be taken.

Step Three: Eradication

Next, you need to rid yourself of the threats that have put you in your predicament. Clean your systems of all malware and, critically, shut the doors behind them. This sounds easier than it will be, as an attacker will also have had the opportunity to find additional points of entry to sneak back in.

Step Four: Recovery

After you’re confident that your systems have been cleared of all threats, it’s time to recover and restore your business to full working order. By leaning on your backups, you should be able to return to a point sometime before the incident and resume operations as they were. This makes it critical that your backup strategy is designed with the ultimate goal of recovery in mind.

If you need help with this aspect, reach out to us!

Step Five: Notification

One of the toughest parts of any security incident—and there are plenty—will be notifying those impacted, from your clients and customers to employees. You’ll also likely need to report the event to the authorities and regulatory agencies. While this is likely to hurt your reputation to some degree, professionally and transparently addressing it should help mitigate some of that damage.

Step Six: Review

Once the crisis has passed and you’ve weathered the storm, you have the opportunity to improve your business’ preparations for the future. Examine the events that occurred and identify ways to prevent similar issues from recurring… as well as ways to respond to such issues better in the future.

This will involve tasks such as security updates, staff training, and enhancements to your incident response plan. This is another area where we can assist you in establishing a reliable and trustworthy strategy to follow.

Data Breaches and Leaks Are No Joke… So You Need to Be Prepared

Businesses everywhere (including, of course, North Carolina) can be seriously hindered by data security issues, which is what makes having a plan to prevent them truly essential.

We can help you devise such a strategy, assisting you in implementing strong security measures, maintaining updates, and enhancing your team’s awareness of their role in data protection. Don’t wait until you already need all of these protective measures—give us a call at (704) 665-1619 to learn what we can do for you.