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Data Breach Prevention: Establishing Protocols to Prevent and Handle Data Breaches

Data breach constitutes a severe concern for every company, no matter the nature of its business, the volume it handles, and its clientele. It leaks confidential information about the organization or its clientele, and in worst cases, both. Accordingly, companies must take data breaches seriously and hire professionals to set up proactive and reactive data breach protocols that help them mitigate the risk and minimize the damage.

Alliant Cybersecurity, the leading cybersecurity company in the US, proves a worthwhile partner in this regard. We help our clients set up effective, compliant, and relevant proactive and reactive data breach protocols to exercise damage control. As a result, our clients stay relieved and enjoy cybersecurity to the possible extent. Get a detailed insight into how we set up data breach protocols for our clients from diverse business domains.

How to Setup Proactive Data Breach Protocols

We follow an eight-step data breach protocol that eliminates the possibility of a data breach happening on account of human error or process errors. Here’s how we help you avoid a data breach in your organization.

  1. Employee Training: We create awareness among your employees and train them on cybersecurity. We do this on a continual basis to avoid incidents of a data breach.
  2. Data Protection and Enforcement of Strong Passwords: We set up cybersecurity systems for comprehensive data protection. Further, we mandate and schedule password changes at least every six months.
  3. Continual Data Monitoring and Transfer: Our experts continually monitor your data and track its transfer throughout the company to avoid data misuse and exploitation.
  4. Setting up Access Limitations and Download Restrictions: We enforce access restrictions to avoid unauthorized entries and to avoid access or use of data by unauthorized people. Further, we also impose download restrictions and help prevent the transfer of sensitive data to external machines.
  5. Avoiding Patch Vulnerabilities: We patch redundant software and address vulnerabilities promptly to avoid letting these factors allow someone to cut through security.
  6. Data and Device Encryption: We encrypt data and devices to protect the data that they contain and thus reduce their vulnerability toward attacks.
  7. Addition of Security Layers: Our cybersecurity experts add an additional security layer in the form of enforcing a two-factor authentication to facilitate a higher level of security, without letting data security rely entirely on just password authentication.
  8. Establishing a Breach Recovery Plan: Our team sets up and implements a quick and responsive breach recovery plan to minimize the risk and the subsequent damage caused by the data breach.

Data Breach Recovery (Reactive Data Breach Protocol)

When we notice a data breach, our teams get onto it as quickly as possible and follow the below protocol to mitigate the risk and minimize the damage.

  1. Stop the Breach

Our team gets onto the breach in the quickest manner possible and does the below.

  • Isolate systems that might be accessed by the attacker to prevent further spread.
  • Disconnect breached user accounts
  • Shut the targeted department
  • Once we complete the containment part, we eliminate the threat to prevent further damage
  • If required, and depending on the type of the attack, we reformat the affected assets and restore them
  • Blacklist the IP address belonging to the origin of the attack
  1. Evaluate the Damage

After eliminating the attack, we investigate the attack and assess the damage. It helps us make necessary changes and further enhance the security system to avoid further attacks. While investigating, we find answers to the following,

  • The attack vector
  • The criticality of the breached data and the type of data affected
  • The basis of the attack, whether social engineering techniques or user accounts
  • The encryption status of the data and the possibilities of restoring it.
  1. Notify Everyone Affected

We notify the concerned authorities, individuals, and third-party companies that might have been affected at the earliest. We do so through email, phone, or other possible and typically used communication channels. The notifications we send comprise the date of the breach, protective measures, factors compromised.

  1. Conduct a Comprehensive Security Audit

Our experts conduct a comprehensive security audit that,

  • Analyzes the situation and all systems
  • Propose solutions and new data security policies

We also perform a DNS audit to secure the entire infrastructure and system administration.

Additionally, partnering with Alliant Cybersecurity gives you the advantage of routine security audits to secure your tech infrastructure to the highest possible extent.

  1. Update the Recovery Plan

The audits that we perform enable us to create a new recovery plan that comprises new privacy policies, data security training, enforcing policies with third-party businesses, etc. In other words, we take every step necessary to safeguard your systems to the highest possible extent from any kind of cyberattacks.