You’ve Been Hacked! Now What? A Guide for Businesses
Oh no!! We’ve been hacked!
This is not the message you want to get when you start your business day. But with today’s cybersecurity becoming an increasing race to beat ever-more persistent hackers, data breaches are unfortunately a likely scenario for organizations of all sizes.
The problem with being hacked – beyond the obvious hassles of trying to recover lost data or restore strangled hardware – is that it can hurt the trust people have in your business.
In the worst-case scenario, a large hack of your customer data can turn into a public relations nightmare – while crippling your business.
Tips for Recovering from a Hack
Once you’ve been hacked, it’s important to take action quickly and decisively. Of course, taking obvious actions like resetting passwords and running anti-virus software is a must. Here are some other suggested steps to take:
Notifying Clients and Regulatory Bodies
Two of the most important actions your business can take in recovering from a hack are notifying clients and contacting regulatory bodies. Clients and customers need to be notified as soon as possible, as the hack may make them personally vulnerable to issues like identity theft or stolen bank account funds. If you don’t contact your customers, and something bad happens to them due to the hack, your company may end up on the receiving end of a lawsuit.
Regulatory bodies, including state and federal governments, may require your business to report data breaches. How and to whom you should report the hack will depend on the state or country you are doing business in as well as your industry. For example, U.S. healthcare providers are required to abide by HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) privacy laws in protecting patient medical data.
Each state in the United States has different laws regarding notification of data breaches, so make sure you are familiar with the laws for your state or states.
Assessing the Damage
Some damage from a data security hack will be obvious – perhaps a computer is locked down and you can’t access it. But for the best in cybersecurity approaches, make sure that systems are thoroughly reviewed by IT experts for less than obvious security and data breaches.
For example, hackers may come in through a specific method – which on the surface may be easy to track. But once they get into the system, they may plant some very hard-to-find but malicious code that is meant to leave an open door for later hacking attempts.
This can be very common on websites. For example, a website running on WordPress software can sometimes be easily made vulnerable through just a line or two of simple PHP code. These back doors must be closed to avoid being hacked again and again.
An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure
Even if you think you have the best cybersecurity measures in place, you might have been more vulnerable to hacking than you realize. And even after you make changes to improve security, people might still remember your business as the one that got hacked. For these reasons, it is important to do a cybersecurity audit after you got hacked to see where your previous IT strategy failed. From there, the next steps would be to institute smarter cybersecurity measures. This would include the basics like stronger password requirements for team members and possibly two-factor authentication.
Printers are prime targets for hackers if they are connected to a network without a proper firewall. So, make sure that all network-connected devices are reviewed for security and possible data breaches.
Improve Your Cybersecurity to Avoid Data Breaches and Boost Data Security
If your business is recovering from a hack, you may need to partner with a company that knows how to handle cybersecurity the right way. Managed IT solutions, including managed print services and managed network services, can be an ideal way to improve cybersecurity without spending a bundle on in-house IT staff or one-off cybersecurity consultants.
With managed network services, remote monitoring, and management of your network can happen 24/7. Additionally, backups, disaster recovery, and business continuity solutions will help make recovering from a hack even easier. Regulatory compliance also becomes simpler for businesses, since managed network services take that burden off of your staff plate.
At Virginia Business Systems, we specialize in providing the best in cybersecurity through our managed network services. With a little help from us, you can improve cybersecurity and avoid hacks in the first place.
Virginia Business Systems is a premier provider of high-quality managed network solutions for businesses. For more information, and help with recovering from a cyberattack, contact us today.