It’s the moment you’ve been dreading. That overwhelming sinking feeling when you realize there’s a high probability that your company has experienced a data breach. But, at the same time, you know that it will be OK because you’ve prepared for this. You’ve established a well-thought-out Incidence Response Plan to handle a data breach when it happens.

And you do have a plan for responding to a breach, right? Because as they say, it’s not a matter of if but when.

Let’s assume you know the very real threats that face your business. Let’s assume that you’ve done your homework. And let’s assume that although your business was targeted by cybercriminals and your company has experienced a breach, you know what to do.

Responding to a breach

This is the time all that planning, preparation and rehearsal is going to pay off. You have already set up a log analysis/alerting framework for determining if you’ve actually been breached. You have identified who will be leading the response. You have rehearsed the plan with your response team and worked the bugs out of your procedures.

You know that the first several hours will be the most critical. The effort will require all team members’ full attention for at least a day. With so many moving pieces you know that coordination and communication will be critical. And since you’ve planned for this, the fact that your email is unavailable won’t slow your plan.

You and your team will work together on controlling the damage like a finely-oiled machine. You’ll find the affected systems, contain the threat, eradicate it and recover. You know that because you’ve invested in real security controls—not just “check-box compliance”—the scope of the damage will already be substantially less than it could have been. And the security technologies you’ve invested in just paid for themselves, ten times over.

You know that each group’s role is clearly defined in the response. Technicians, managers, and legal players will work together to dissect this monumental effort into byte-size pieces. By diving into every part of the breach and finding the root cause(s), your team will find, fix, and finalize the problem that led to exposure.

Because of your foresight and planning, you will weather this storm and fix the breach that might have otherwise ruined your reputation or even your company.

You’ve still got work to do, but the path to recovery is straight and narrow. And you know what to do.

Or do you? A vast majority of business leaders who are victims of data breaches do not have a plan. If you’re one of them, contact us now so that we can help you establish an Incident Response Plan.