Survive Data Breach by Following These Tips
Data breach has become more rampant lately. Several tech experts have found a way to make use of their knowledge to get easy money. Due to their anonymity and their method of getting the data, tracking them down is really difficult.
Aside from the data obtained from the company, this is also a branding challenge. The information shared with you by your customers are sacred. It means that you are entrusted with the said information. Even if you did not intend to have the said information leaked, it will be taken against you. Here are some tips for you to survive a data breach as soon as it happens.
Determine the extent of the breach
As soon as you have found out that there was a data breach, evaluate the extent of the damage. If the information obtained is irrelevant, just shut it down. You would rather have it lost than other more essential data. Change the passwords and other codes so no further leak could happen. At this point, you have to immediately hire an IT expert to help you out. Perhaps, your IT department could not handle this problem as it is too big. Even large companies like Sony outsourced technical help when the problem occurred.
Check potential suspects
The investigation must start right away. In many cases, the information was hacked because of an employee working for the company. This is more difficult to solve since you don’t want to just randomly point fingers at them since this could mean distrust. However, in the investigation phase, make them understand that thorough checks would be done and this would include all employees. You should also make it clear that you won’t immediately blame them for what happened. Sometimes, the breach occurred because of the sites they have opened or files downloaded and uploaded. It was not really their intention.
Learn from the experience
It takes time to fix the problem, identify the suspect and move forward. However, once the information has already been hacked, you could not turn back the time. You just have to learn from your experience and be careful next time. Train your employees so they won’t use sites that could have potential consequences. Hire more IT experts to place better firewall to avoid data breaches in the future.
It also does not hurt to work with authorities. This depends on the scale of the problem. If it is too big, you have to seek help from appropriate government departments. They will send people to help with the investigation right away. You just need to be cooperative.
The worst thing that you can do in a situation like this is panic. Your employees are also lost and confused. Some of them might even fear that they could have caused the breach. Your steady leadership is necessary to keep them strong.
Many companies have gone through this trial and they have survived. Just keep working hard and improve the security features.
Photo Attribution:
Featured and 1st image from http://www.informationsecuritybuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/Data-Breach.jpg
2nd image from https://www.hackread.com/dacgroup-hacked-state-farm-accounts-leaked/
