Digital threats continue to grow in scope and complexity. Naturally, an increase in businesses that experience data theft or loss is also on the rise. Was your business affected recently? Do you want to understand more about what’s at stake and how to salvage this unfortunate situation as best as you can? Here’s what you need to know.
The Impact of Cyber Incidents on Your Business
Accidental deletion, data breaches, and other cyberattacks can profoundly impact the stability and even survival of your business. Depending on the scope and affected data, you might be looking at millions of dollars in monetary damages. And that’s just the part of the fallout you can quantify.
Failure to safeguard data, especially if it contains personally identifiable or medical information, may find your business in breach of laws and regulations like HIPAA. This can result in fines and prolonged legal action.
Your business reputation suffers as well since partners and clients might no longer consider you trustworthy. In addition, your business may experience day-to-day operation standstills and slow recovery as employees may struggle to retrieve or rebuild lost data.
What Steps To Take After an Incident?
Once you become aware there’s a problem or a potential cyber incident, containment is the first and immediate action your business should take. Shut down and isolate affected systems so the incident doesn’t spread. Then, change affected account passwords, restrict access to essential staff, and apply any security updates that might have been missing.
Assessing the damage is next. Pinpoint the cause and source of the incident. Take stock of the extent of the incident, cataloging what data was compromised and how. Your IT team may be up to the task. If not, consider external help from specialized digital forensic professionals.
Once the incident is contained and investigated, your next responsibility is to notify business stakeholders. Depending on the severity, these may include everyone from users and vendors to law enforcement and the general public. Communicate about the incident transparently and per legal requirements. Provide actions that your business is taking to overcome the incident and inform what measures affected parties should take to mitigate the damage on their end.
Lastly, implementing stronger cybersecurity measures will ensure improved resilience. Likewise, monitoring previously affected systems and regularly performing security audits will minimize the chances of repeat incidents.
How to Augment Your Cyber Defenses?
Which improvements to focus on will depend on the identified weak points.
For example, if you experience a data breach, you may need to strengthen data encryption and access control. In this case, integrating a company-wide digital vault may be the most adequate solution since it serves as a central encrypted repository for all company data. It’s possible to set up stratified access to it, ensuring that regular users can only interact with data designated as relevant to their work. A digital vault can also serve as a redundancy necessary for effective backup.
Securing internal networks with next-gen firewalls is also imperative, as is keeping endpoints updated and regularly scanning them for malware.
Much data compromise happens due to human negligence or error, so assessing and improving employee awareness is another priority. Everyone should undergo training that reinforces core cybersecurity best practices and helps participants identify threats like phishing scams and other social engineering attacks.
If your business has remote employees, remember that they can potentially put internal systems at risk by connecting to them from unsafe networks like public Wi-Fi. Since such networks are easily compromised and monitored, make it a policy for remote workers to always use a VPN to encrypt their connection and access any company data or communicate with colleagues safely. The best business VPNs often offer free trials, so it’s a good idea to test out a few providers before committing to one long-term.
Finally, treat the loss as a learning experience. Use it to refine your prevention strategies and incident response plan, mitigate future risks, and handle them more competently if and when they do occur.
Conclusion
Compromised and lost data can cripple your entire business operation and even threaten its very existence. However, giving into panic isn’t going to resolve the issue or prevent it from happening again. Take a proactive approach, use the knowledge you’ve gained here, and emerge from this temporary setback stronger than before.
