For IT workers, there have been some chilling headlines in the past few years: Major data breaches at Sony, Target and Walmart, the high profile Ashley Madison hack, Hillary Clinton’s email story, and many others…

These cases highlight an unfortunate reality of doing business in the cyber age –

You need to have a plan in place should your company be hacked.

In addition to eroding public confidence, a cyber-security breach can take a devastating financial and personal toll on a company and its brand. — Baseline Magazine

Why you need a plan:

As a rule companies that have a coordinated response and succeed in managing the event, rather than responding to issues as they come about, tend to fare better in outcomes.

Once a breach has occurred, the ensuing chaos can make it impossible to create and effectively implement a response plan. — Baseline Magazine

Here are a few points your policy must address.

Before events

• Ongoing readiness – It’s well worth conducting an occasional drill for all the teams involved in managing this type of event, to make sure everyone is capable of filling their roles effectively.

During the event

• Containment – Seal off and protect unhacked information.
• Manage the event – Hold initial briefings to stakeholders, clients and press. Disclose what’s happened and what you’re doing to fix it.

Post event

• Investigation – Identify where the breach started and how.
• Analysis – How can you prevent this case and similar ones from occurring again. What can you learn from how your team handled the event.

It should protect a company’s critical assets and sensitive information, including confidential customer information, employee files, sales and product records, intellectual property and other critical data. Baseline Magazine

How do you protect against such a threat?

Of course, the best way to deal with a hack is to rebuff it in the first place. And while you may believe external hackers are the biggest threat, don’t forget about your employees.

Employees who fail to follow security protocols – or who are actively trying to sabotage the company —  may be a weak link in many organizations, according to The Ponemon Institute’s 2015 study, “The Human Factor in Data Protection.”

Monitoring software is one option.

Such software allows you to:

• See whether employees have uploaded or downloaded data
• Ensure no one is sharing protected company information
• See what websites an employee is accessing on company devices like laptops and smartphones
• Track chats and observe keystrokes

How does your company plan on protecting against the threat of hacking? Comment and let us know!