When data breaches and cyber attacks happen to big organizations, this leads many IT departments as well as boards and executive management across all industries to turn their eyes onto their own security policies and procedures to make sure they’re doing everything they can to avoid becoming the next headline.
According to a recent Proviti report, “Delivering Security, Value and Performance Amid Major Transformation”, nearly two out of three organizations today are undergoing a major IT transformation. More than ever, CIOs and IT staff, as well as boards and the C-suite are on edge today due to the emerging nature of cyber attacks. Especially since today, when a massive data breach happens, the aftermath often includes having to make an appearance before Congress to testify. Organizations must ensure they are highly vigilant in establishing strong security and privacy measures and need to have an incident response plan already in place when a data breach strikes.
When a data breach happens, organizations can no longer just react as there will no doubt be inquiries into whether or not there was an incident response plan in already in place to help with the breach aftermath. It has become very important for organizations today to take proactive steps before a data breach happens and to create a comprehensive and effective incident response plan. Organizations who find themselves without a response plan when a data breach happens may be deemed as not having taken reasonable measures to have a process in place when they ultimately should have.
According to the Proviti report, preparing for, monitoring for and responding to security incidents – swiftly and effectively, based on an established policy and tested processes – understandably has become a critical concern. The emphasis on incident response underscores the increasing realization that data breaches are a matter of “when” not “if”.
Some questions to consider when reviewing and establishing an incident response plan:
- Does your IT strategy include an incident response plan?
- Have you updated your plan to include potential events stemming from new technologies (mobile/cloud) or application approaches (social media)?
- Have the right functions/people been involved in the creation of your incident response plan?
- Have you addressed incident response procedures with your vendors?
- What steps are in place to test response speed and improve upon the quality of your incident response plan?
- Does your incident response plan include a cyber/data breach insurance policy?
Incident Response is More Important Than Ever
Today if a data breach response is not handled well besides financial and reputation loss there could be legal actions brought by those whose information has been disclosed and also by federal regulators.
It’s no longer a surprise when data breaches happen but now when they do occur there’s many, many inquiring parties today from consumers to regulators to Attorneys Generals that will want to know how an organization or business is responding to their incident and what will be done to prevent such an incident from happening again.
Cyber/Data Breach Insurance can Help Ensure an Effective Data Breach Response
Cyber/data breach insurance is a turn key incident response plan and offers the entire incident response team and all of the services needed to ensure a comprehensive and effective data breach response from start to finish. The coverages include a team of response experts (I.e., legal counsel, forensics investigator, Public Relations), customer notifications mailings, customer call center, customer credit monitoring program, defense costs, regulatory fines/penalties and more. It is important to note that these coverages vary greatly as all cyber/data breach insurance policies are different which is why you will want to work with an insurance broker, such as Cyber Data Risk Managers who has expertise in the various cyber/data breach policy coverages and variations.