How a Third-Party Data Breach Can Affect You and Your Business

When a third-party breach affects your business, it can have serious consequences. The most recent AT&T breach led to financial losses, damaged reputations, and put customer data at risk.  

 Three Questions to ask When a Vendor Leaks Business Data:

When a vendor leaks your business data, the first thing you should do is assess the damage to help evaluate and drive future critical action with these three questions: 

1.  How much data was leaked?  
2.  What kind of data was leaked?  
3.  Who had or has access to the data? 
   
   

Answering these critical questions can determine the extent of the breach. For example, the breach may not have impacted encrypted or public information data, but the breach affected other data.  

Six Steps to Protect Your Business after a Breach

Once you’ve assessed the damage, you should follow these steps to protect your business from further damage:

1.  Notify customers whose data was leaked
2.  Offer customers a credit monitoring service
3.  Take steps to secure your systems
4.  Report the breach to the attorney general in the state in which your customer resides
5.  Hire a firm specializing in incident response
6.  Terminate your relationship with the breached vendor and find a more secure vendor to hire
   
   

Five Tips for Working with Third-Party Vendors

1.  Do your due diligence
2.  Evaluate your vendors properly to minimize legal exposure
3.  Make sure you understand third-party vendor security protocols
4.  Check the vendor for a good track record of protecting customer data
5.  Consider having a contract outlining the vendor's responsibilities in case of a breach
   
   

How to Protect Business Data During & After a Breach

It’s essential to have a plan to respond to a breach, including steps for notifying customers, assessing the damage, and taking steps to protect your business from further damage. Having a plan can help you respond quickly and effectively to a breach, minimizing the damage to your business. Don’t wait until a breach happens to plan.

Data breaches are becoming increasingly common from the customer’s point of view, and it’s essential to take steps to protect your data both during and after a breach. While it’s impossible to protect yourself from a data breach completely, there are steps you can take to minimize the damage and protect your data. 

How to Protect Business Data During & After a Breach

1.  Lock your credit accounts
   • Locking your credit accounts is the most direct way to protect yourself from identity theft and prevents anyone from opening new accounts in your name or making unauthorized charges. 
   • Lock your accounts through the major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. 
2. Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) and long paraphrases
   • MFA requires two or more pieces of information to verify your identity, such as a password and a   code sent to your phone.
   • Long passphrases are more secure than passwords because they are harder to guess. A good passphrase should be at least 12 characters long and include a mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. 

Two Steps to Take After a Breach

1.  Monitor your accounts for any suspicious activity
   • Check your credit reports for any unauthorized accounts or charges. 
   • Monitor your bank and credit card statements for suspicious activity.
     
2.  Change your passwords regularly to help prevent anyone from accessing your accounts with old     passwords
   • Use different passwords for different accounts to help prevent someone from accessing all of your accounts if they manage to guess one of your passwords. 

Data breaches can be devastating, but by taking steps to protect your data during and after a breach, you can minimize the damage and protect your data.

1.  Start by locking your credit accounts
2.  Use standard security tools such as MFA and long passphrases 
3.  Monitor your accounts for any suspicious activity 
4.  Change your passwords regularly
5.  Consider using a password manager
   
   

By taking these steps, you can help protect your data and reduce identity theft risk.  

iCorps is here to help. Click here to request a free consultation and start your digital transformation with our expert team of consultants and IT professionals dedicated to providing unique services and solutions tailored to your business’s individual goals.