Cyber attacks happen daily and many businesses suffer from it. It’s a nightmare if you ever wake up one day and suddenly become one of the victims. Having your business hacked is costly and very damaging, especially since a lot of livelihood depends on it.
In an event of an attack, here are the things you could do:
Keep Yourself Calm
Panicking isn’t going to help. You can only worsen the situation if you act on what you feel at the moment. So take a deep breath, clear your mind, concentrate on reducing the effects by approaching the issue at hand with caution and consideration. You should also keep in mind to never tamper with the evidence of the breach.
Have a Quick Response
You can save more money by responding faster. First of all, you should identify and verify the attack. Verification of the attack entails recognizing which systems have been hacked, identifying the IP addresses that were used during the attack, and verifying the attack’s kind.
Have a procedure in place for immediately alerting network users when a threat or vulnerability is found.
Isolate the Infected
Just like putting a sick person on quarantine, you should keep your infected computers away from the uninfected ones. This is a way to prevent the further spread of the malware or virus.
In addition to assessing the harm done, your incident response team should search for any backdoors that hackers might have installed in order to get access to your system in the future. It’s also possible that a dependable vendor was compromised, and that’s where the compromise started. In that situation, make sure to ban each and every account belonging to that provider until they are able to remedy the problem internally.
Recovery Time Should Be Allowed
Determine the importance of each component to the operation before ordering the cleaning and restoration process. For all impacted computers, you should install your most recent clean backup and update the passwords.
You must also have a backup of your crucial files in order to complete this stage. We thus expect that you have been continuously following our advise to regularly backup sensitive and important data to an offline device that is not linked to the network.
Password changes for the entire firm should be made after system restoration. Verify that no systems are still utilizing default passwords or obvious passwords like “admin” at this time.
Necessary Parties Should be Informed about the Breach
Businesses must provide the authorities with their information. Even while there may be legal requirements to follow and even penalties to pay, resolving these issues swiftly might help allay fears that the industry had after learning of the attack.
You should also give the information to your stakeholders and customers. Consider how much worse things are for the company that tries to keep the assault hidden and is later found to have withheld information when assessing the public relations cost of revealing a breach. In terms of public relations, always be in charge of the message rather than letting a cunning journalist break the news for you.
Even with the risk of tainting your reputation, it is good to be transparent about the breach because this could create a ripple effect and help other businesses who are suffering the same fate as you. You will also be able to warn others of the possible threat.
Be Ready for the Next Attack
As the saying goes, “ Better safe than sorry”, you were already sorry, might as well get ready for being possibly hacked again.
You could try to know why your business was a target in the first place. In this way, you can create an elaborate plan on the measures that you should take to not be attacked again. You can create an updated, improved security plan with the aid of a better knowledge of the breach’s cause.
Educate Your Employees
To prevent your business from being hacked, educate your employees about protecting their passwords, keeping their passwords unique, to avoid too much disclosure of private information, avoid downloading and clicking links, and teach them about maintenance of antivirus and malware defenses.
The hassle and stress is unimaginable if your business falls victim to hackers. The cost of valuable data and assets are reason enough for you to get yourself protected from any cyber threat. Keep yourself updated from all threats that might harm your business and educate yourself so that in the event of a hacking, you will know how to recover from it.
Here at Intelecis, your security is our business. Our fast and 24/7-available cybersecurity experts can guarantee you that your business will be our top priority. We are a 5-star cybersecurity company in Southern California that has all the tools your business needs to prevent or recover from a cyberattack. Your peace of mind is our primary goal. Talk to us today to get your business on board to a world class cybersecurity service.
