Privacy Incident & Breach Response

Data breaches are growing more common and more expensive, and they aren’t limited to just the big players. Consider the fact that:

• The average data breach costs businesses $4.35 million.
• Annual cybercrime in the U.S. alone costs businesses over $10 billion.

Mitigating risk and designing controls with robust security measures has never been more important. However, security and privacy teams have accepted that even the most robust controls and precautionary measures are not foolproof.

Because of this, privacy professionals must develop a plan to prepare for, respond to, and mitigate the impact of privacy incidents and breaches. Doing so effectively requires a clear understanding of whose data you have, where that data lives in your organization, where it is processed, who it has been shared with, and the controls behind which that data is protected.

Less Mature

With immature privacy incident practices, your organization may lack:

• formal response plans
• incident reporting practices
• and employee training processes on how to recognize and respond to potential incidents.

More Mature

On the other hand, a mature breach response process will involve a clear and detailed plan for identifying, reporting, investigating, and mitigating incidents and breaches. Such plans should also include a communication strategy for notifying affected individuals and relevant authorities as well as guidelines for post-incident review and improvement. This includes regular testing and improvement of response procedures as well as ongoing monitoring and risk assessments to identify potential weaknesses. These plans will be coordinated across many departments, specifically cybersecurity and legal teams, to ensure breach response plans support forensic investigation and legal privilege.

Important Note

Privacy professionals should keep in mind that incidents and breaches can have a significant impact on an organization’s reputation and financial stability. It is therefore critical to establish strong practices that ensure timely detection, swift response, and effective remediation of incidents and breaches.

Recommended Next Steps

To improve your privacy incident and breach response practices, consider taking the following actions

• Develop and maintain clear incident response plans that are regularly reviewed and updated.
• Establish a reporting mechanism that enables employees to easily report incidents and breaches.
• Provide regular training and awareness programs for employees to help them identify and respond to potential incidents.
• Conduct regular incident readiness assessments to identify potential gaps and areas for improvement.
• Create a post-incident review process to identify lessons learned and improve incident response plans.
• Ensure the organization has appropriate processes and tools to support the incident response process, including being able to provide relevant information and deliverables to support any incident management software and forensic analysis investigation.
• Establish clear communication channels for internal and external stakeholders, including employees, customers, regulatory bodies, and law enforcement agencies.
• Continuously monitor and stay up to date with changes to relevant laws and regulations regarding incident reporting and notification requirements.