Your IT systems are compromised by a third-party data breach. How will you safeguard your operations?

1. Determine the extent of the impact on your systems. 2. Conduct a thorough investigation to identify compromised data and potential risks. 3. Work with your security team or a cybersecurity expert to track the breach's source and understand how it occurred. 4. Use the gathered information to prevent future incidents. 5. Formulate a response plan to mitigate any damage.

Immediate Response: • Isolate the Threat: Disconnect affected systems from the network to prevent further data exfiltration. • Contain the Breach: Work with the third party to understand the breach’s scope and containment measures. • Activate Incident Response Plan: Follow your predefined incident response plan to manage the situation.

Involve/inform senior stakeholders as part of the non-technical incident response procedure. Thereby each stakeholder (comms, legal, insurance, business reps, etc.) can prepare potential follow up actions needed.

Assume nothing. The question is ambiguous, and the actual situation will be even more ambiguous. Obtain as much information about the scope of the breach as you can from the third party. Examine your audit trails for indicators of compromise. Do not count on the third party report except as a starting point. Many organizations, even large organizations, do not have the in-house expertise to assess a data breach--so if you have any doubt, conclude a relationship with a qualified incident response and forensic analysis consulting firm with 7x24 coverage and a 30 minute first call SLA. Calibrating your response will be a challenge: if you start slamming doors the impact to your business could be worse than the effects of the breach.

The key thing is to :- 1. Take immediate action to prevent the data breach by doing a full analysis 2. Develop a breach recovery plan 3. Implement recognised standards such as ISO 27001 4. Conduct a lessons learnt workshop

Assessment and Investigation: • Identify Compromised Systems: Use forensic tools to determine which systems and data were affected. • Assess Data Impact: Determine what type of data was compromised (e.g., personal, financial, intellectual property). • Engage Experts: Hire cybersecurity experts if needed to conduct a thorough investigation.

Immediately isolate the compromised systems to prevent further damage. This may involve taking systems offline, changing passwords, and revoking access privileges. Patch any vulnerabilities that may have been exploited. Ensure that all software, including third-party applications, is up-to-date. Implement additional security measures such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) and intrusion detection systems (IDS). By securing your systems promptly, you mitigate the risk of further breaches and protect sensitive data.

lock down your systems to stop the breach from spreading. This means cutting off affected networks, disabling compromised accounts, and shutting down impacted servers. Boost your security by updating firewalls, enhancing encryption, and applying all the necessary patches.

Notify (internal) stakeholders must be done much earlier in the process in my view. Especially legal and insurance must me made aware at the beginning. During the whole incident span (identify, eradicate, contain, recover and learn) , the non-technical incident response team (call it management bridge who are all trained on CSIRT) must be closely aligned.

You should have law enforcement, your public affairs/public relations office, your incident response team, your leadership team (and board, if applicable), and key IT personnel on speed dial. If you haven't done it, study the Incident Command System (ICS), at least ICS 100 and ICS 200. There is a lot of wisdom and prior experience in handling large scale events that you can utilize. You don't need to literally implement ICS, but it wouldn't be the worst idea, either. If the incident has a large potential reputational impact GET IN FRONT OF IT. Don't let the press drive "the narrative."

Craft precise communication for stakeholders using secure channels. Implement data classification tools to identify which stakeholders are affected based on the data compromised. Utilize an automated notification system integrated with your CRM to ensure timely and accurate information dissemination, maintaining trust and transparency throughout the incident management process.

Keep it transparent. Let your employees, customers, and partners know what’s going on. Regular updates can help manage the situation and maintain trust. Being open and honest shows you’re handling it responsibly.

Conduct a thorough audit of third-party contracts using contract lifecycle management (CLM) software to identify security gaps and compliance issues. Enforce stricter security clauses and data protection agreements. Utilize legal tech tools to streamline the review process and ensure all vendor agreements meet current cybersecurity standards and regulatory requirements.

Check your contracts with third-party vendors. Make sure they have strong cybersecurity clauses and clear responsibilities. This helps you understand the legal side and ensures vendors are accountable.

Post-Incident Analysis: • Review Incident Response: Analyze the effectiveness of your incident response and identify areas for improvement. • Update Policies and Procedures: Revise security policies and procedures based on lessons learned. • Conduct Training: Provide additional training for staff to recognize and respond to security threats.

Human error is irrelevant. The ancient military axiom is "judge your enemy by his capabilities, not his intentions." Training can help, but overdoing the mandatory security trainings may actually have a counterproductive effect on your security culture. Another military axiom applies here: slow is smooth and smooth is fast. It may seem like an incident is a great time to cram security training down your users' throats, but other than succinct lessons learned about the incident, ramping up training is likely to be a retrogressive control. Ladle out the lessons over time.

Cybersecurity isn’t just an IT thing it’s everyone’s job. Train your team to spot phishing attempts, follow best practices, and report anything suspicious. Regular training can seriously cut down future risks.

Revise and enforce IT security policies using governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) tools to automate policy management and compliance tracking. Conduct regular policy audits and penetration tests to validate the effectiveness of the updated protocols. Implement a dynamic incident response plan that evolves with emerging threats and integrates lessons learned from the breach.

Take a good look at your cybersecurity policies and update them based on what you’ve learned. Make sure your incident response plan is up-to-date and run drills to keep your team sharp.

This whole incident response process is a continuous learning cycle that must be trained regularly, both technical as well as non-technical. Using a strong process in the non-technical incident response team might help to prevent chaos. The OODA loop is a good example of such a process.

The most important tool in your incident response toolkit is your escalation procedure: who gets called when, and what each does. That is the meat of your IRP. Consider evidence priority (pursue & prosecute) or recovery priority. You can't have rapid recovery while preserving evidence, and adequate evidence collection will substantially delay recovery. This is a question that has to be answered in advance. Most importantly, you have to be thinking about this stuff in advance. You don't need detailed policies and procedures if you have competent personnel - but you do need a framework that can guide actions in exigent circumstances.

Mitigation and Recovery: • Patch Vulnerabilities: Address any security gaps or vulnerabilities exploited during the breach. • Restore Systems: Use clean backups to restore affected systems, ensuring they are free from malware. • Enhance Security Measures: Implement additional security measures, such as multi-factor authentication, encryption, and network segmentation.

Develop a robust incident response playbook with clear escalation paths and predefined roles using security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) tools. Balance rapid system recovery with forensic analysis to preserve critical evidence. Continuously refine your incident response strategy through tabletop exercises and red team-blue team simulations to ensure preparedness for future incidents.