Planning and Preparing for a Security Breach Incident

Any business needs to plan and prepare for a possible incident as part of your security strategy. Here are a few things to do in advance to be able to mitigate any damage that a breach could inflict. 

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First is preparation. Develop and review your incident response policies, as well as conduct a thorough risk analysis. Train your team on simulated instances. Post those policies and engage third parties to review them. 

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Ensure you are set up for incident detection. The timing of detection is critical especially with wire fraud. Create the infrastructure to detect and alert key people for your breach response to then take place. 

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Containment is critical once an event is discovered, so that further damage can be mitigated. If you suspect your IT system has been compromised, review your network and infrastructure. No changes should be made on any devices without the security team’s approval. An image of the system should be stored for forensic investigators if needed. And this will help build an understanding of what is compromised on the system. 

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This information can also be used for informing key stakeholders such as partners or customers, and for future training. After your systems are restored to former operational status, a post-mortem can be obtained documenting a comprehensive summary of the events that led to the breach. 

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The hope is that an incident never occurs, but being well-prepared with a response policy and plan could be significant in your ability to recover and mitigate impact as quickly as possible.