Data Breach? Follow These 10 Steps for Incident Response
If a data breach occurs at your business, it can be a harrowing event. This article will outline what responding to a data breach looks like when you do it right.
At Montiel Hodge, we offer data breach legal advice that can save your business from severe consequences. Get in touch with us today to learn more.
10 Steps for Incident Response
Data breach incident management involves taking steps to mitigate the issue. Those ten steps include:
1. Stay Calm
Experiencing a data breach will likely cause a reasonable degree of stress. The key is to stay calm and avoid knee-jerk reactions, as they will probably do more harm than good.
2. Stop the Spread
Stopping the spread of the breach will prevent further damage and loss. Change passwords, secure systems, and access codes, and fix any outstanding vulnerabilities that could have aided the breach.
Since data is most businesses' main component, you should have an incident response plan in place. When a breach occurs, follow this plan closely.
4. Assess the Scope
You’ll need to know how badly the breach impacted your company and what departments were affected. You’ll also need to know where the hackers got in, what data was touched, and whether they’re still inside.
5. Contact Legal
You probably have many unanswered questions that a data breach attorney like us at Montiel Hodge can answer. We can help you figure out what liabilities you have, who needs to be informed, and whether you should negotiate with the hackers.
Beyond a data privacy lawyer, you should also get law enforcement involved - especially if the hackers are still inside your system.
7. Notify All Affected Audiences
After you’ve got a handle on the scope, notify those who need to be notified. This includes customers, employees, business partners, investors, and other stakeholders.
8. Start Building Defenses
It’s likely that this won’t be your last time experiencing a data breach. To build defenses, change password policies/user privileges, increase security awareness training, implement multi-factor authentication, strengthen your third party risk management, and more.
9. Begin Recovery
After the hackers are no longer inside your system, it’s time to get your business back up and running.
Your plan should be robust and effective, and its processes should be readily available to anyone who could be affected by a data breach.
Have You Experienced a Data Breach?
Data breaches today are more common than they’ve ever been. If your company has fallen victim, don’t wait to get in touch with Montiel Hodge today for legal counsel.
