Pre-Breach Incident Response Planning is a Necessity, Not an Option

Best practices and tips for getting your data breach response planning started before the next incident

The impact of data breaches

Statistics reveal that the biggest impact of a data breach is reputational damage, with more than half of companies going out of business within six months of a cyberattack. This highlights the critical importance of data breach response planning. While financial costs can often be recouped, many companies never recover from the reputational damage of exposing customer data. Customers are highly protective of their sensitive personal information and most won't give a second chance to a company that doesn't look after it.

Data from the Ponemon Institute and IBM estimates that the average financial cost of a data breach is $4.24 million, more than a third of which stems from lost business.

Best practices for data breach mitigation

To mitigate a data breach and better recover from the resultant fallout, you must have a highly comprehensive and well-formulated incident response (IR) plan. Preparation is the most crucial part of any IR plan and will define how quickly an organization recovers and the severity of the impact.

To ensure your company has adequate IR preparation in place, you'll need to pay close attention to the components that make up your cyber defenses. Beyond just the technology that protects your IT systems, you need to place a strong focus on staff training and pre-breach planning.

Pre-emptive data breach response planning

When developing your pre-breach IR plan, you should include the following items:

• Approval and funding to cover all aspects of the IR plan
• Comprehensive training for the broader IR team, including members of HR, legal, customer service, and others
• A fully-equipped security operations center (SOC) with 24/7 coverage
• Adequate staff to run a managed detection and response (MDR) team
• An up-to-date inventory of all assets within the organization
• A data restoration plan that includes an encrypted document with the location of backups and details of any necessary credentials, passwords, keys, etc.
• Strict information security policies
• A strategy for how you will notify customers, partners, shareholders, and law enforcement
• A detailed data destruction policy

The importance of an incident response team

A carefully selected and well-trained incident response team is vital to the successful implementation of an IR plan and mitigation of a data breach incident. If your organization handles cardholder data and is required to comply with PCI DSS regulations, you must:

• Have an IR team on call 24/7
• Test your IR plan annually
• Train staff accordingly
• Set up intrusion alerts
• Update the IR plan when required
• Follow relevant data management regulations (HIPAA, GDPR, CPRA)

In the event of a data breach, members of the IR team will be responsible for carrying out the various steps of the IR plan, which include identification, response, and recovery.

Identification and Response

As soon as the threat is identified, the IR team must immediately instigate breach mitigation procedures and begin gathering logs, memory dumps, audits, and network traffic for a post-incident investigation. Containing the fallout may require a complete shutdown of all affected network devices including computers, servers, and databases. Any relevant security hardware and software must be patched or upgraded, hard disks wiped where necessary, and credentials updated. If a specific entry point is identified, at this stage the vulnerability must be fixed or removed entirely. IR team members must use all information available to them to track the attackers and gather any intel they can about the intrusion methods used.

Recovery

A key part of incident response planning is preparing for the recovery from a data breach. Your incident response team should consider many facets of this effort including:

• Disclose the breach to all affected parties, including customers, stakeholders, business partners, law enforcement, and government officials.
• Compile and report on any regulatory risks and compliance violations.
• Distribute internal communications and notify staff of recovery procedures going forward.
• Conduct a root cause analysis and vulnerability analysis.
• Restore IT systems to normal per safety protocols.
• Arrange for updated staff training to avoid future incidents.
• Evaluate the performance of the IR plan and update it where needed.

Staff training

A highly educated and experienced cybersecurity team is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to data breach mitigation. You'll need to provide comprehensive incident response training to several areas of your organization, including human resources, public relations, legal, finance, and customer service. These departments all have a critical role to play in the event of a data breach and must be able to act without hesitation.

Beyond those with a direct role to play, all employees must have up-to-date cybersecurity training and education, know how to use encryption for data storage and transfer, and adhere to strict password policies. Statistics reveal that 94% of organizations have suffered a data breach caused by employees. It's also good practice to conduct mock data breach drills as you would a fire drill. These will help to highlight gap s in your incident response plan.

Cybersecurity technology

Technology is your first line of defense against cyberattacks and must be kept up-to-date and monitored 24/7. Attackers won't hesitate to take advantage of any legacy hardware or out-of-date software that leaves a hole in your defenses.

In addition to a next-generation firewall (NGFW), robust encryption, and a solid backup strategy, data breach response planning should include the following cybersecurity monitoring and detection tools:

• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
• Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
• Intrusion Detection System (IDS)
• Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)
• File Integrity Monitoring (FIM)
• Antivirus (AV)

The IDX priority response MSA

Data breach response planning can be prohibitively expensive, leaving many organizations to question whether they need it. IDX offers breach response services for every stage of a data breach without any initial cost. This ensures your organization is fully protected and you only incur costs when you require our data breach services.

Our incident response team is standing by with experts ready to provide rapid response in a breach situation. The No-Cost MSA includes a crisis media planning workbook and annual breach response review and planning. If you're unsure whether your business needs data breach response planning, read the Breach Response Buyers Guide to answer all your questions.

About the IDX privacy platform

IDX is the leading privacy platform built for agility in the digital age. We offer bespoke products designed to protect you and your organization's private data with some of the highest quality digital privacy solutions available today.

As the nation’s largest provider of data breach response services, IDX protects over 40 million consumers and is trusted by Fortune 500 companies and the highest level of government.