How to Deal With a Data Breach
Whether hackers steal personal information from your computer systems or your data is inadvertently posted on the internet, a Data Breach can cause significant damage to your organisation. Damages can include reputational damage, financial losses, legal troubles, regulatory fines and a profound loss of consumer trust.
Consumers are increasingly aware of the value of their data and if they see that an organisation is not taking cyber security seriously, they may choose to take their business elsewhere. In fact, research shows that up to a third of customers in retail, finance and healthcare will stop buying from an organisation after it suffers a Data Breach.
Hackers often exploit unpatched vulnerabilities, phishing, malware or other means to breach the security of systems and access sensitive information, such as intellectual property, customer data, health records and more. Their motives range from financial gain, identity theft and ransomware to cyber warfare, corporate espionage and hacktivism.
Regardless of the motive, once the breach is completed, the hackers extract or exfiltrate the data from your organisation’s system and take it outside your network. They can then sell it on the dark web, use it for cyber attacks or simply keep it for future use.
Once you know what data was breached, it’s important to isolate the affected areas of your computer system and put clean machines online in place of those that were compromised. Then you need to notify affected parties — this could be employees, partners, customers and the media. You should also check that all of your firewalls and network security policies are working properly.