What is data breach mitigation? What is its importance? And how can companies make sure of this? To know more about this, keep on reading this article.
Data Breach Mitigation Plan
Data breach mitigation is the process of taking actions to minimize or reduce the damage caused by a data breach. The team responsible for the mitigation is usually referred to as the “breach response team.”
Data breach mitigation is the first action that a company should take after a data breach. It is important to take this step immediately after the breach because it’s considered one of the best ways to protect the company’s reputation, clients, and other stakeholders.
Then, a data breach mitigation plan should be designed by the company’s information security team. This plan will then be used by the breach response team to minimize or limit the damage caused by a data breach. A good data breach mitigation plan should contain at least these three parts:
Preparation
This part of the plan is designed to prepare the company for a data breach. It then includes things like:
- The creation of a team to handle a data breach, such as the breach response team.
- Next, the creation of an incident response plan (more about this below).
- Then, the creation of a communication plan.
- Also, the creation of a data breach response training program for employees and other stakeholders.
- Lastly, the creation of an off-site backup system to ensure that important data and information is still accessible. Even if the company’s primary system is hacked and/or compromised.
Identification
This part is designed to detect a data breach as soon as possible. This step will help you to take actions as soon as possible to minimize or reduce the damage caused by a data breach, such as taking down the breached website, changing passwords, etc. Then, the four main ways that companies can identify a potential data breach are:
- Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS).
- Firewalls and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS)
- Encryption software
Containment
Containment is when the breached company is trying to limit the amount of information and data that is exposed and/or stolen. There are two main approaches for this:
Removing or disabling the breached system from the network.
This step is taken if a company’s system is compromised and has been used to steal data from other systems on the network. In this situation, it’s best to put the system offline so that it cannot be used again to steal data from other systems on the network
Recovery
Recovery means restoring systems and data that have been compromised by the cyber attack. It includes things like:
- Securing breached systems with updated patches or fixes.
- Updating affected systems with new firmware.
- Notifying clients of potential issues.
- Notifying clients of potential access problems with their account on your website/mobile app/cloud storage/etc.
- Re-establishing trust with clients by offering free credit monitoring services or similar services for a limited period (usually 30 days).
Data Breach Mitigation: Conclusion
As you can see, data breach mitigation is an important and necessary process for any company. After a data breach, you should quickly take actions to minimize or reduce the damage caused by the cyber attack.
