Attacked? These Are The Critical Steps You Should Take

Attacked? These Are The Critical Steps You Should Take

While prevention is key to limiting cyber crime’s impact on business, having a proper cyber recovery strategy is just as important.

Cyber attacks have become too common today for organizations and businesses and increasing at a rapid pace. No matter what precautions or measures are taken by companies or people to curb Cyber attacks, there is a still a possibility that cyber attack can happen and people should be ready to tackle the situation if it happens. Hacked devices, network breaches, stolen data and other such attacks can happen at any point.The cost of an attack can be devastating. Businesses are not always fully prepared for the cyber attacks, it’s also important to focus on the recovery, not just prevention when securing your business. Cyber attacks don’t have to turn into a crisis. With the right crisis management, the incident can be contained, and with it normality can be restored. Organizations should define a framework or standardized process to follow once the attack happens in order to alleviate the damage caused by the Cyber attack.

Below are steps can be followed to contain the incident and recover from a Cyber attack:

1. Identifying and containing the problem : The first step to do after a Cyber attack is the most important, and also by far the most overlooked. Identifying a cyber attack can sometimes be harder than it seems but it is really important to identify the data breach at the earliest. The identification of a data breach is about finding an answer to the following questions:

  • When did the cyber attack (breach, loss of data, attempt) take place? 
  • What type of attack was it? 
  • How will the cyber attack affect the customer? 
  • What assets have been impacted by the attack? 
  • Who are the victims of the attack? 

The identification makes it easier and more effective to respond to the problem. 

2. Containing the Problem: After identification, the focus must turn to containment. Containment will be a task for the IT department or a job for an external cybersecurity specialist. Preserving evidence is critical to assessing how the attack or incident happened and who was responsible. The very first step you should take for containing a breach or incident is to determine which servers have been compromised and to contain them as quickly as possible to ensure that other servers or devices won’t also be infected. All the affected endpoints and servers should be disconnected from all other systems to prevent the malware from spreading.  During containment, sensitive data should be separated from affected networks, and all login systems and authorization systems must be reset 

3. Reporting to the relevant stakeholders: Reporting the incident has become increasingly important with the new GDPR reporting rules. While an organization may be reluctant to share that their defenses have been breached, it is of utmost importance that your clients be informed so they can take appropriate measures to protect themselves and their families. According to the law, companies have to report the incident to corresponding authorities but also the customers that might have been impacted by the cyber attack. company must have a proper response plan ready. 

4. Identify Vulnerabilities and Strengthening cybersecurity measures : The security professionals should help identify and mitigate the vulnerabilities used to illegally access the network and firewall. Once vulnerabilities have been identified, security software, hardware, protocols and training to strengthen your organization’s cybersecurity should be deployed to strengthen organization’s cybersecurity. 

While prevention is key to limiting cyber crime’s impact on business, having a proper recovery strategy is just as important. If companies follow the right procedures, and take the right step after an attack, the impact can be managed efficiently, and recovery can begin immediately.