Many organizations are waking up to the realization that they may need to bulk up their data breach mitigation policies and processes. Though this sounds straightforward, it can often be difficult to know where to start, especially when threat actors are mounting increasingly complex attacks each day.
While putting together a data breach mitigation plan may feel a little bit like a gameshow, it doesn’t have to be all guesswork or trial and error. You have resources available to help you out. Much like phoning a friend or asking the audience, some of the mitigation techniques below can act as lifelines and keep you from losing considerable money when it comes time to work toward mitigation and prevention.
If any part of this article piques your interest or you’re left wanting to learn more about how an extension of team may help you meet your security goals, reach out and schedule some time to talk with our seasoned security experts. They’ll be happy to address any questions you may have and give you actionable steps you can take to make your organization more secure.
Get a Baseline and Keep Collecting Data
When you are setting up your data breach mitigation strategy, you should look at all the ways you can stay one step ahead of threat actors. One of the best ways to do this is through proactively gathering information to check for patterns of behavior and exploitable vulnerabilities in your system. There are several routes you can take to make sure your data stays safe. CISA offers free environment scanning services that help you document and collect data about vulnerabilities so you can address them before they start.
Additionally, you should proactively keep an eye on your access logs to stay one step ahead of internal threats. Unfortunately, human error is one of the leading causes of disasters like data breaches and sometimes that error is intentional. If you have an employee frequently showing up to work outside their normal working hours, they may accessing or gathering data that they could sell to threat actors. Address these patterns of behavior as soon as they arise.
Involve the Team
It can be really easy to feel like the entire burden of your data breach mitigation strategy should fall solely on the shoulders of your IT team, but that’s simply not the case. Data breach mitigation and prevention should be a priority for everyone in your organization from the HR team to the helpdesk to the CEO.
One of the simplest ways you can mitigate data breaches is to educate your team members and customers about appropriate cyber hygiene beyond what they learn in onboarding. Routinely prompting them to update passwords, utilize company VPNs and keep their devices physically secure can go a long way. By keeping login credentials fresh and devices secure, you slash the likelihood of a
A less-pleasant element of employee education includes some time spent learning signs of employees who may be putting the company at risk via intentional action. Train them to look for employees who start suddenly keeping odd hours, working outside their scope of responsibility and downloading files they have no reason to download. Provide an option for employees to report these instances anonymously.
Start a Checklist
Having a baseline response process on record and ready to go is a great start for your company’s data breach mitigation policies, but make sure you are regularly updating those processes based on how you respond to events in real-time. While a years-old data breach mitigation plan will help in a pinch, it won’t be nearly as effective as one that is updated after each mitigation effort to reflect what worked and what didn’t.
Additionally, when you’re in the midst of a breach, attempting to clean up whatever mess you find yourself in, you’ll likely find your team pulled in many directions, which makes it easy for important actions to fall through the cracks. When you document your response processes, it’s important to assign ownership to tasks or even implement checklists to ensure those tasks are completed in the most effective order.
Call in Reinforcements
Even if your IT security team is full of the best in the business, there is always the chance they could be spread too thin, depending on the nature of your organization’s security demands. Alternatively, you may be a part of an organization that simply does not have enough manpower to go around or cannot afford to train and maintain the security staff they need to successfully meet the evolving compliance and security demands of your industry.
This is where outsourcing some of the burden to a trusted security services provider may be of benefit to you. Remote hands offerings at data center or cloud providers can help make peace of mind a reality for your organization beyond the firewall. There are people on the ground at your contracted facilities whose sole job it is to continuously implement the latest and greatest security technology and processes in accordance with current attack trends as well as compliance regulations.
LightEdge is Here to Help Make Mitigation Manageable
With over 20 years in business, LightEdge knows data breach mitigation isn’t a game. We offer a full stack of best-in-class IT services to provide flexibility, security, and control for any stage of a customer’s technology roadmap. Our solutions include premier colocation across seven purpose-built data centers, industry-leading private Infrastructure as a Service and cloud platforms, and the top global security and compliance measures.
Our LightEdge facilities are more advanced than traditional data centers with security built into the very fabric of what we do. We have created true Hybrid Solution Centers designed to offer a complete portfolio of high speed, secure, redundant, local cloud services and managed gateways to public clouds through our hardened facilities.
Are you ready to take important steps toward making sure you’re not susceptible the threat of data breaches? We have security experts standing by to answer your questions and help you find solutions to your most pressing IT security questions. To learn more or get in touch with an expert, contact us here.
