Avoid these Common Mistakes When Dealing with Data Breaches

From the loss of data to drastic sums of revenue, data breaches can severely handicap a company for a significant amount of time. However, given that a data breach prevention plan is not always foolproof, one question remains.

How does a company effectively deal with a data breach to mitigate its effects? Let’s find out in this blog.

7 Common Mistakes That Companies Commit

So it happened. The attack was successful, and there was a data breach—resulting in a large portion of the files being lost and the people behind the attack making their demands.

The first order of business should be mapping out an incident response plan to restrict data loss at the minimum. The next challenge is implementing this plan. Many times, while doing so, companies make some common mistakes.

It is time to delve into those mistakes and figure out how you can prevent them from happening if you fall victim to a data breach.

1. Waiting for accurate information.

In many cases, a cybersecurity team may look to wait for all the information they require to launch a successful mitigation or incident response plan. However, the actual aftermath of a data breach is very dynamic, where information is constantly changing due to the analysis being carried out by internal or external forensics teams.

In actuality, companies must implement their response as soon as the threat or attack is detected. Any wait for accurate information will prove futile as it can lead to condensed timeframes making it impossible to tackle the attack effectively.

2. Lack of communication.

The communication between various members and departments in the company is of utmost importance post data breach. This is because, in order to manage the data breach properly, tasks need to be delegated quickly so that more ground can be covered.

Therefore, with so many people working on managing a breach, there needs to be communication between them to piece together all the information they have attained.

3. No practice drills.

A great way to determine all the necessary aspects of an incident response if a data breach occurs is to conduct drills. Not only will this test out the data breach prevention policies and measures that are in place, but it also helps everyone involved to understand what their role is.

Therefore, if these drills are carried out before an actual data breach, it may result in mayhem while the company tries to put up its defenses.

4. Absence of leadership.

As mentioned before, the roles that each person and every team plays in handling a data breach are important. Therefore, it is also essential that a single person oversees the entire operation and is capable of making decisions.

This leader will receive reports from every team involved in mitigating the attack and will, therefore, have to coordinate with every party involved. This person will have to be the voice of reason during this trying time and do everything in their power to ensure that the response plan is being implemented properly.

5. No third-party agencies.

There may be instances where a company will not be able to handle a data breach simply with in-house staff. Therefore, it is advisable to bring in external agencies that are more equipped to handle data breaches. In addition to this, these agencies also have more experience in mitigating such attacks meaning that the company may not lose a drastic amount of data.

6. Absence of legal counsel.

Data attacks are accompanied by several legal implications like lawsuits from shareholders or even customers. For this reason, a company must bring in the required legal professionals to help with the implications. They will also be required to help dispense guidance from a legal standpoint early on after the data breach.

7. Lack of remediation.

One of the most important aspects of dealing with a data breach involves determining how it happened in the first place. Was it because of vulnerabilities in the security measures? Or was it a human error?

Either way, the organization has to make it a point to analyze every aspect of the data breach and its handling and bring about the needed changes. Changes may be required in the security measures for data breach prevention or even handling it.

According to several reports, a data breach typically costs an organization anywhere from $3.86 million to $4.26 million. In fact, in light of the current working norms, the prevalence of data breaches only seems to be increasing.

However, learning from the above mistakes, an organization can remain defenseless in the face of a data breach.