Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the incompetencies of individuals and organizations alike to protect themselves as they take refuge in the dark post a breach. Everything ranging from a weak password and exposed sensitive information to vulnerabilities in the software and network infrastructure could lead to the cybercriminals compromising their victim’s account and data. Consequently, our experts have shared on what steps can be followed in the event of a security breach.
It is noticed that a lot of people use the same password for all their social media profiles as well as their banking accounts, without changing it often. Among other dangerous practices, people have confessed to using public Wi-Fi for financial transactions and some of them don’t even use antivirus software or a VPN.
A failure to incorporate proper security with their online activity can subject people to a data breach. Consumers are putting themselves at risk by not protecting their personal and private information. The mindset of indulging in risky behavior while being online from public places needs to change.
Consumers can protect themselves in a better way by using a few secure methods like using different passwords, by avoiding conducting financial their business on a public network.
Organizations, however, that fail to adequately protect them are often easy targets for cybercriminals. In such scenarios, it’s just a matter of time before the security breach takes place. The way in which organizations handle data breaches is as critical as securing the organization against one. To help organizations deal better with data breaches our experts suggest the following measures.
In an event of a breach, the most important thing is not to panic. A team needs to be assembled and a calculated approach needs to be formulated. The team could consist of people from the HR, communications, investor and public relations along with legal, depending upon the nature of the security breach.
Below mentioned are the few prevention tips to follow.
The three-pronged approach
A three-pronged approach is advised to prevent a breach
- Securing all the systems in an organization
- Fix the vulnerabilities that may have caused or can cause security breaches
- Notify appropriate parties
Secure physical areas
Any potentially infected systems should be disconnected from the networks and should be taken off the office premises. The organization also needs to secure the physical areas that are directly related to the breach and change any access codes if any.
Review your website
If a data breach involves any improperly published information on any of their websites, then they need to check all the related websites for any vulnerabilities or compromised data that needs to be removed quickly.
Internal Investigation
While conducting an internal investigation, organizations need to interview the right set of people who discovered the breach and make the staff know whether they can provide additional information that can aid the investigation.
Get experts involved
To get the vulnerabilities of an organization’s IT network fixed, ensure experts are involved to ensure proper network segmentation, learn the scope of who is the most impacted and follow their recommendations to address vulnerabilities.
Create the right plan
Organizations need to formulate a comprehensive and responsible communication plan for all affected parties, which included law and enforcements, other affected businesses and individuals.
Once the data breach has taken place, the best course of action is to address how it happened, what steps you can take to mitigate it and what is the organization doing to ensure no breaches take place again.
One Comment
Yasmin Bates
Nice Blog!! The content you have shared is very elaborative and informative. Thanks a lot for sharing such a great piece of knowledge with us.