According to some research, every 40 seconds a new cyber attack starts. This just highlights the importance of cyber security, but even with great cybersecurity, you can still be susceptible to a data breach.
So what happens if you are under attack? You’ll need to know what process to follow if it does.
Keep reading to learn all about how to deal with cyber attacks when they happen to your business or organization.
1. Contain the Breach
When they first experience a data breach, many people are tempted to delete everything. However, you need to contain the evidence of the breach so that you can figure out who did it and who was responsible.
So, find out which servers were compromised and contain them as soon as you can to make sure other devices and servers aren’t infected as well. To do this, you can first disconnect your internet.
Then, make sure that all remote access is turned off and check your firewall settings as well. Then, install any security updates or patches and change all of your passwords.
Even if passwords weren’t affected, you should still change them just in case. Make sure that the new passwords are strong and unique for each account. That way, if you have another breach in the future, only one of your accounts might be compromised.
2. Report the Attack
Some might be tempted to cover it up because it’s embarrassing, but you need to notify people if their data was breached.
When you report the breach, it’ll depend on what type of attack you experienced and how bad the damage was. For example, if you lost money, you’ll have to tell the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) as soon as possible if you lost client money or information.
Even if you recover it, you’ll still have to tell the client, repay any money, and then take steps to make sure that you don’t have future attacks.
In addition to that, you should also tell your bank and see if they can replace the funds that you lose.
“Your reporting duty will depend on the kind of cyber attack you’ve experienced and what the damage was
However, if you lose personal data, you have to report that to the Information Commissioner’s Office. To help other people learn from this, you can also report it to the Action Fraud and SRA.
Lastly, you’ll need to notify your clients as well. However, you won’t need to do that if you can prove that the data that was breached was encrypted or protected by some other measure.
When this happens and you have to tell people, you should also have a PR strategy in place as many customers will likely have questions. Tell them what your position is and consider holding a Q&A section as well.
3. Investigate
After you’ve told the affected parties (if any), you’ll need to investigate why and how the data breach happened in the first place. You should already have a disaster recovery plan in place, but if you don’t, you’ll need one now.
First, report the breach to the right authorities and then try and find out who is behind the attack. There are even some digital forensic teams that you can hire for your business.
They’ll inspect the security incident to figure out what caused the attack and what was affected.
When you do an investigation to figure out how the breach happened, you’ll know what areas you need to focus your cybersecurity on.
4. Assess the Situation
You’ll also need to assess the situation. Was the attack directed at you, or were there multiple businesses involved?
Find a trusted source, follow updates, and monitor the situation to figure out what steps you’ll need to take next.
Regardless of if you were the only one targeted, you’ll need to figure out what the cause of the breach was in your facility. This will help you prevent a similar attack in the future.
To figure out how it happened, you can ask yourself how they initiated the attack. Figure out what network connections were active at the time. Who had access to those servers, and could they have been compromised?
You can also check your security data logs. These come from your email providers, firewalls, or antivirus software.
5. Learn From Mistakes
Now that you’ve reported everything and done investigations, you need to learn from your mistake so that you can reduce the risk of a data breach in the future.
If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you’re leaving yourself open to another data breach in the future. Analyze the attack to see if there are any security loopholes or vulnerabilities left in your cybersecurity strategy. You may even want to do an attack surface reduction.
Come up with certain measures that will boost your security and help you reduce the risk of a cyber attack in the future.
There are many tools out there that will help you have tighter security. For example, on GitHub, you can have security administrators notify you if they notice that someone breached something in your system.
Discover More Things to Do to Recover From a Cyber Attack
These are only a few things to do to recover from a cyber attack, but now you need to focus on ensuring that it doesn’t happen again.
There are many strategies that can help, but you may want to contact a cybersecurity specialist.
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