Every business needs to plan for unforeseen events, including the loss or theft of company data. Losing or stealing data can not only damage company, brand, and customer trust but can often be subject to costly state and federal privacy and data protection regulations. Data loss can also expose companies to significant process risks.
That’s why it’s extremely important to understand exactly which data or security breach rules affect your business and how willing they are to respond to them. This should form the basis of a privacy incident response plan that facilitates a rapid and coordinated response to data loss or theft. At the very least, all employees and contractors should understand that they must immediately report the loss or theft of information to the appropriate company official.
And since data protection and infringement laws can be very broad and strict, losses should not be ignored. So even if you have sensitive data that simply cannot be accounted for, such as an employee who doesn’t remember where you left the backup tape, it can still be a privacy incident and you need to act accordingly.
Developing a cybersecurity plan for your business requires effort, but it can make the difference between outperforming your competitors and closing your business for the next few years. These are the basic steps you can follow to develop your plan.
Before you understand the state of cyber threats, you need to look at what types of cyber-attacks your organisation faces today. Which types are currently affecting your organisation most often and most severely like malware, phishing, insider threats, or something else? Has there been a more serious event than your competitors lately, and if so, what threats have caused them?
Next, make sure you are aware of the predicted cyber threat trends that may affect your organisation. Supply chain threats, such as the purchase of endangered components or their use within the organisation or their incorporation into products sold to consumers, are also of growing concern. Understanding what threat, you will face in the future and the likely severity of these threats is essential to developing an effective cyber security strategy.
Once you know what you’re running into, you need to upgrade your organization’s Cybersecurity. Choose a good Cybersecurity framework and use it to assess how mature your organisation is in dozens of different categories and subcategories, from policy and management to security technologies and incident recovery capabilities. This assessment should cover all technologies, from traditional IT to operational technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cyber-physical systems and networks.
Then use the same cyber security framework to determine where the organisation should be in the next three to five years in terms of maturity for each category and subcategory. For example, if distributed denial of service attacks poses a serious threat, you may want to make your network security capabilities particularly mature. If ransomware is your biggest security issue, it can be critical to ensure that your backup and restore capabilities are very mature.
Now that you know where you are and where you want to be, you need to figure out the cyber security tools and best practices that will help you get to your destination. In this step, you determine how you can improve your Cybersecurity program to achieve your defined strategic goals. All improvements cost resources such as money, staff time, and so on. To achieve the goals, different options need to be considered, as well as the pros and cons of each option. You may choose to outsource some of your security tasks.
Once you have selected a set of options, you need to present them to the top management of the organisation for review, feedback, and hopefully support. Changing your cyber security program can affect your business and lead to it.
Finally, small businesses are the favourite target of cyber-criminals. When a breach occurs in your organisation, every second either counts against you or for you. If you have an incident response plan incorporated in your plan, you can swiftly and drastically reduce the damage.
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