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Data Breach Recovery: Steps a Company Must Take Post Incident

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DataProst reports that the average cost of a data breach is nearly $4 million, while the average price of a single stolen record is about $150. To avoid such immense expenses, loss of reputation, and legal action, it is better to take preventive measures and secure data against such exploits. However, in a world where up to 70 records are stolen every second, a data breach seems inevitable. Still, implementing an effective data breach recovery strategy before an incident occurs in your organization is a good proactive approach that will offer you a ready-to-use framework and help to act fast and reduce the potential harm caused by the incident. What should a company do after a data breach? This article provides valuable suggestions.

Respond to the Data Breach Immediately

Depending on the nature of the data breach, it may be possible to isolate the affected systems or disable the attacked services to stop the attack and minimize losses. Even if significant damage has already been done, it is important to ensure that an attacker no longer has unauthorized access to the company’s data.

In the meantime, it is also necessary to report the incident to regulatory authorities. Affected individuals should also be informed about the incident. In many countries, this step is mandatory and not completing it can result in high penalties.

However, even if you have the choice to remain silent, it is better to announce the problem honestly to every party involved in the incident. Transparent communication will help you maintain the trust of those affected by the data breach, including your business partners, customers, or stakeholders.

A good step is to bring in legal experts to help you resolve the issue.

Forensic Investigation

It is not enough to stop the attack. It is crucial to determine the vulnerability that allowed the attackers to access the data and the extent of the exploit. Cybersecurity experts who specialize in digital forensics can help you trace the attack vectors and analyze the systems that were compromised.

Assess the Affected Data

It is also a good idea to assess the affected data. Take enough time to classify it according to potential impact and sensitivity, and use this information to develop further measures to deal with the consequences of the data breach and develop new prevention strategies.

Do not forget to document any information uncovered during the assessment, whether discovered by cybersecurity experts or your staff. Include information about the incident, the actions the company took to address it, and the outcomes.

What should a company do after a data breach?

Undeniably, to increase the level of security.

Unfortunately, unlike many other exploits that benefit from vulnerabilities that can be addressed with a proper solution, data breaches require a complex prevention strategy that still cannot eradicate all possibilities of record theft. However, implementing such a strategy will reduce the vulnerability of your data.

Security Assessment

One of the most crucial things you should do is review how data is stored and used by applications and employees in your organization.

For example, if you are using an ERP system like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management, you should make sure that you are properly utilizing the roles and permissions that it provides. If you find it difficult to configure your system, you can seek help from ERP software providers like XPLUS or use a dedicated Security Setup tool from XPLUS.

Pay attention to the security measures you already have in place, as they may no longer be effective. A great example is two-factor verification, which uses a phone number to verify access to services that handle sensitive or financial data. A malicious actor can obtain the number by porting it to their device. Such SIM swapping is usually done by mobile operators to allow their customers to keep the phone number associated with a lost SIM card.

Regular Training

As a rule, employees make business data vulnerable, whether they intend to or not. On the one hand, they can make technical mistakes that lead to the disclosure of sensitive data; on the other hand, they can fall victim to social engineers who gain access to the data they need through clever manipulation. In addition, employees themselves may be interested in committing a data breach.

To manage this problem, at least to some degree, you should provide regular training to your employees so they know about the strategies of social engineers and the consequences of handling company data insecurely. Most importantly, security training should be done regularly, as employees tend to return to their usual habits that can leave their data vulnerable.

Review the Level of Security in Your Organization

To understand how vulnerable the software that uses your company’s data is, you should conduct penetration tests on a regular basis. If your company works with software that is involved in financial processes, you might even be interested in offering a bounty program for white hat hackers to analyze your code base for a reward before a malicious actor exploits it.

For complex security assessments, you might be willing to work with professional security auditing firms.

Find more at: What should a company do after a data breach?

Leverage Security Tools and Technologies

Implementing advanced cybersecurity technologies is another important preventative step. Some of the options you can consider for your organization include data encryption, authentication protocols, and intrusion detection systems.

Bottom Line

No matter how much you increase the security measures in your company, the data can still be breached. For this reason, it is highly recommended to develop a recovery strategy so that you have a ready-to-use framework and can act quickly if such an incident occurs.

Some of the key components of your strategy should include vulnerability and breached data analysis, as well as ways to strengthen security to prevent new attacks. Transparency about the incident to legal entities and all parties affected by the security breach is also necessary to comply with local regulations and maintain trust.

Kossi Adzo is the editor and author of Startup.info. He is software engineer. Innovation, Businesses and companies are his passion. He filled several patents in IT & Communication technologies. He manages the technical operations at Startup.info.

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