Hopefully, your business has never been the victim of a data breach. If you are currently looking for answers on what you should do after a data breach, this article will be incredibly helpful to you.
If your business is dealing with a data breach, the first thing you should do is find the source of the data leak itself.
Data leaks can present themselves in the following forms:
-
- Rogue Employees
- Misconfigured Software
- Lack of Business Compliance
- Website Hacks
- Third Party Vendor Hacks
And the list could go on. Task a team of IT professionals to do a post mortem on the data breach so that your organization is never the victim of data breach again.
Check Your Local Laws
The laws on data privacy are rapidly changing. If your business is involved in a data breach, you might be required to inform your customers of the potential for their identities being stolen.
Check the local laws and regulations on what your business must do in order to report data breaches to customers, clients and end users within your organization.
Contact the Authorities
If your business has been hacked, you might want to contact the authorities to help investigate your situation. The authorities may treat this like any other crime and they could ask for evidence and reports on what actually happened.
When you report these events to the authorities, they can build a database of clues and they can use their resources to try and convict the cyber criminals who are trying to steal your personal data.
Conduct Pen Testing
If your data breach was due to an attacker penetrating your network from the outside world, you’ll want to run a pen test in order to figure out how that attacker was able to gain access into your network.
Pen tests are crucial for any business that needs to identify the source of an attack. If you are able to run a pen test and find vulnerabilities, you’ll likely know which weaknesses were exploited after data has been breached from your network.
Regular Security Audits
If the weakest link in your business if your employees, you might want to attempt to use phishing emails in order to attempt to trick them into social engineering schemes.
If you can identify which users need additional training, you can further reduce the risk for a data breach that is inadvertently generated by an end user on your staff.
This is just one tactic that can be used to identify potential threats. You can also run regular security scans on your network.
Enforce Company Policies
What if the source of your data breach isn’t an incorrectly configured system; what if it is a person? Your company policies should directly address what happens to an employee when they are the source of a data breach.
Sometimes, employees can be the source of a data breach and not even realize it. In instances where employees have fallen for phishing or social engineering scams, the employee may not know that they have released private data at all.
Take a strong and consistent stand against data breaches and accurately define what could happen to employees if they are the source for the breach.
Data Breach Aftermath
No business wants to deal with the aftershocks associated with a data breach. In fact, data breaches are often considered one of the most preventable cyber attacks. Since data breaches focus on a weak link in your system, it is your duty to find that weak link and bolster security around that person, product or service. When you contract a managed service provider to help determine what your next steps should be after a data breach, you’ll gain clarity on how to recover from a data breach.
Experiencing A Data Breach?
If you have any worries about your network security, please call us at (833) 482-6435, or click the banner below to schedule an IT security audit so we can find the best security solutions for your business.
If you enjoyed this IT Support article, please check out other posts on our blog and join us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ to see how else we can help your Greenville, SC or Atlanta, GA area business succeed!