Has your business experienced a data breach? Data breaches have become more common in recent years. Statistics show that over 160 million records were breached in 2019. As a business owner, you can’t ignore a data breach. Regardless of how many records it involved, you’ll need to take action to mitigate the damage and restore your business’s operations.
Lock Down Your IT Infrastructure
Upon discovering that your business’s data has been breached, you should immediately lock down your business’s information technology (IT) infrastructure. Data breaches typically involve exploiting a vulnerability in a target business’s IT infrastructure.
Maybe your business failed to encrypt its data, or perhaps it didn’t use strong passwords for high-privilege users. To prevent future data breaches, you must correct these issues so that they don’t leave your business’s IT infrastructure vulnerable to intrusion and, therefore, data breaches.
Evaluate the Damage
Along with locking down your business’s IT infrastructure, you should evaluate the damage caused by the data breach. In other words, determine how many records were breached and what type of data those records contained.
Some data breaches are more damaging than others. Generally speaking, the more records that are breached, the greater the damage. A data breach involving 10,000 records will likely cause more damage than a data breach involving just 500 records. Whether it’s big or small, though, you should evaluate the damage when responding to a data breach.
Send Notifications
Sending notifications is an important step to recovering from a data breach. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), businesses should notify law enforcement if they experience a data breach. It’s against the law for unauthorized individuals to access or steal your business’s data. Therefore, the FTC recommends notifying law enforcement.
You should also notify the individuals whose data was breached. If the data breach involved your business’s customers or clients, for example, notify them as soon as possible so that they can take the appropriate measures to safeguard their credit and identities.
Prevent It From Happening Again
The worst thing you can do after a data breach is nothing. If a hacker was able to penetrate your business’s IT infrastructure, he or she may do it again.
Data breaches occur from vulnerabilities. If your business’s IT infrastructure is secure, only authorized individuals will be able to access its protected data. As as a result, responding to a data breach requires taking a closer look at the circumstances so that you can prevent it from happening again.
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