Within every organisation, there is the burden of having to respond to any serious data breach within 72 hours. GDPR makes this a legal obligation.
As many as one in four organisations will suffer a data breach in the next two years, so it’s incredibly important to have a data breach response plan in place. This will help you deal with the collateral impact of a stressful breach.
Actions that help you respond to data incidents:
An effective plan will help to reduce the financial and reputational damage that comes with a breach. The plan should clearly show the best actions to take should a breach take place.
Here are some key recommended steps to include in a good data breach response plan:
- Identify the incident:
Spotting a breach promptly can be the difference between a moderate disruption and a full-blown disaster.
- Establish your objectives:
Review what caused the incident and set ultimate goals. Ask yourself how soon you can notify customers and when you can put your systems back in use.
- Determine the cause:
It often takes some time to piece together what happened and to discover what damage has been caused. Review anything and everything that could have been compromised.
- Targeted or random?
Most breaches are random attacks but occasionally incidents are targeted. It’s important to find out how a breach happened – if you don’t address the root cause, it could happen again.
- Financial implications:
Knowing the financial implications helps you plan for the long-term. Recovery costs money too and is important to factor in, especially if recovery time will affect your ability to meet future deadlines.
- Reevaluate insurance:
Knowing the financial implications will allow you to make new decisions about cyber security insurance, protecting your company as much as possible for the future.
A data breach response plan helps you prepare for a breach and recover from disaster, helping you get back to business as usual with minimum disruption. It pays to be prepared.
