After a data breach, you’re not immediately worried about how the hackers got into your network. Maybe they used an employee’s accidentally leaked credentials or exploited a weakness in your system. Your top priority is minimizing the risk to your data.
If you’re not already planning an effective data migration strategy, now’s the time to get started. However, creating an effective strategy involves a few simple yet crucial steps.
How to Create a Data Mitigation Strategy
Every business is different, even when they’re in the same industry. Data breaches also vary in type and scope. These factors can affect the steps you include in your data mitigation strategy. However, the basic framework typically remains the same.
Identify the Type of Breach
Hopefully, you have a system in place that automatically alerts you when a data breach occurs, and your system should also identify the type of breach that occurred within it.
From there, you identify the affected systems. Some breaches are localized while others can infect multiple files. You also need to identify the type of data that’s compromised in the breach, and this will help you figure out the next steps, including who needs to be notified of the breach.
Who you notify of the data breach usually depends on your industry. The type of data also plays a role in who you inform. For example, if you’re in the healthcare industry, HIPPA rules apply.
Don’t reboot your systems after a data breach until you’ve documented all evidence of the cyber-attack. Your goal is to retrace the hacker’s steps to figure out how the breach occurred. If you can retrace their steps, it’s easier to prevent another breach.
Contain the Breach
After identifying the type of breach, you want to contain the damage. An optimal scenario allows you to catch the breach before the hacker gets too far into your systems. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Most hackers are well into a system before they’re discovered.
Containing a data breach means isolating the affected systems, which can include disconnecting devices from the internet, segmenting your network, and possibly even temporarily blocking remote employee access. Remember, data breaches can occur through a remote employee’s access point. Disconnecting these team members from the network can impact business operations but it’s often necessary to keep a breach contained.
Now it’s time to look at your security protocols. Passwords will need to be changed and you should also review who has access to critical systems. If employees have left the company and still have network access, now’s a good time to revoke their privileges. Keeping them intact only increases your risk of another data breach, and this may also violate compliance standards, depending on your industry.
Don’t forget to document every step of the containment process. You’re going to need the documentation to show you’re meeting industry compliance standards.
Remediation and Data Recovery
Now that you understand how the breach occurred and you contained the infected systems, you can start the remediation process. This may involve repairing any vulnerabilities in your cybersecurity protocols or removing malware. If employee credentials are the hackers’ access point, all of this information will need to be changed.
After checking to ensure your backup files aren’t affected by the breach, you can start the recovery process. Hopefully, you have an effective data backup plan.
Before you bring all of your systems back online, double-check the integrity of your backup data. Yes, you’ve verified the data is safe but it never hurts to check it again. The last thing you want is to restore inaccurate data. Your business may never fully recover if it is relying on corrupted data.
Something to consider is bringing on a third-party security team. They can review your systems, including your backup data to ensure it’s secure. A third-party consultant can also help you improve your security posture to help prevent another data breach.
Notify the Appropriate Parties
Your data breach mitigation strategy should include your regulatory and legal notification requirements. This includes the timeline for notifying any affected parties and what information you must disclose about the breach.
We briefly mentioned HIPAA earlier, which is the governing framework for patient information within the healthcare industry. Who you notify depends on your industry. If consumer information is part of your data breach, communication is going to be key.
You must alert consumers but you also don’t want your customers to lose faith in your brand. Your message should contain the necessary information while also reassuring consumers you’re taking immediate action to resolve the problem.
With an effective data breach strategy, you can mitigate the damage before it turns into a disaster affecting every part of your business.
