A Multinational Breach Response Requires a Flexible Approach

Complex multinational breaches demand a localized and customized response plan

If your organization has global operations or international market interests, you understand that cybercriminals respect no borders. A breach of your customer, vendor, or employee data could affect individuals or entities outside the United States, and the results can be devastating not only in the usual terms of financial and reputational damage, but also in terms of logistics and communications issues.

Due in part to the interconnected nature of the global economy, multinational breaches are becoming more and more inevitable. In fact, data breaches outside the U.S. accounted for a majority of such incidents in 2021, according to the 2022 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report. Not even the European Union, with some of the world’s most stringent data security and privacy regulations, has been immune from the international cybercrime trend.

This is why multinational breach response planning has become a necessity for many organizations—and why it’s essential to work with a partner that offers expertise in handling multinational breaches, especially because these incidents can differ in key ways from domestic ones.

Here are some of the unique challenges associated with multinational breach responses, along with important factors that global organizations should consider when choosing a breach response partner.

Navigating complexity in a multinational breach

Ian Kelly serves as SVP, Data Breach Solutions at IDX, one of the largest and most experienced data breach response company in the U.S. He and his team offer a Multinational Data Breach Solution featuring customizable products and services designed expressly for international breach response, including breach notifications through multiple channels, call centers staffed with skilled multilingual agents, incident-specific website hosting in multiple languages, and international identity monitoring.

According to Kelly, the biggest challenge of a multinational breach in comparison to a domestic one is the wide range of jurisdictions and complex regulatory frameworks involved. He says that when it comes to communicating with and protecting affected populations across borders, global companies should be thinking about the following questions:

• Are you notifying different markets using a single method, or are you using multiple methods of notification?

• What language issues do you face in regard to written (text, email, web, letter) and spoken (call center) communications?

• What’s your strategy around protecting the affected individuals in each market?

• If you are providing identity protection or credit monitoring to affected groups, how are you deploying across multiple countries, where the service offerings aren’t all the same?

The need for flexibility in breach response

Among the qualities an organization should look for in a data breach response partner are the capacity to flexibly scale for large and complex breaches, and the ability to provide customized, localized communications to the impacted population and regulators, whenever appropriate. Both of these qualities are particularly vital when dealing with a multinational breach.

Denyl Green, VP, Client Services at IDX, says that IDX helps solve the challenge of multinational complexity by maintaining a flexible approach. She explains that companies need to be able to pivot quickly, particularly in terms of the languages used in communications. IDX has planned for this, “at the call center level, within other communications, and on our platform. The user can self-select how they want to receive their services. That’s going to help with mitigation because first and foremost, people have to be able to find out what’s going on and learn what’s available to them.”

Ian Kelly adds that IDX has created international breach response services with the built-in flexibility to be “global in scope, meaning they work no matter where the person is located or what language they speak. Our clients who have multinational issues are able to offer something that’s equitable across all those various jurisdictions.”

(For more insights from Ian Kelly and Denyl Green on how organizations can better respond to data breaches, read their full joint interview.)

Expertise on emerging threats worldwide

Finally, an effective response to a multinational breach isn’t possible without a partner experienced in identifying and disrupting the full range of existing and evolving threats, from phishing and fraud campaigns, to botnet exposures, to data breaches and physical risks. IDX has expanded its expertise in this regard, having become part of the ZeroFox family in 2022. ZeroFox is a leader in external cybersecurity, with a platform that combines advanced AI analytics, digital risk and privacy protection, full-spectrum threat intelligence, and a robust portfolio of response capabilities.

When the inevitable cross-border data breach happens to a global organization, it’s not nearly enough to fall back on the same response tactics used with domestic breaches. Multinational breaches are far too complex in their regulatory and communications challenges. Consider adding a breach response provider that has expertise in the unique circumstances of multinational incidents, and offers comprehensive services localized for the most effective response.