If an incident occurs, will you know what to do? How can you avoid panicking and making the wrong decisions that could impact your data recovery, insurance claims, a police investigation at risk, or put you at risk of regulatory fines?
Have you identified all the necessary contacts to enable effective crisis management? Do you know when you are required to notify authorities such as the Commission for Information Access and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre? Should you also contact your cyber insurer?
what do we mean by ‘”incident’”?
An IT or security incident is a violation or imminent threat of violation of IT security policies, IT acceptable use policies or standard security practices. More specifically, a confidentiality incident (Act 25) relates to a potential data breach or violation caused by:
- Unauthorized access to personal information
- Unauthorized use of personal information
- Unauthorized disclosure of personal information
- Loss of personal information or any other breach in the protection of personal information.
If you witness or are aware of a potential incident, notify your IT support team immediately.
An incident response plan can ensure your company’s survival
An IT and cybersecurity incident response plan establishes the organizational structure, operational authority, action plan and procedures necessary to:
- Identify, contain and respond rapidly to an incident
- Assess and determine the severity of the incident quickly and effectively
- Initiate communication procedures to notify appropriate people
The incident response plan is designed to provide an initial response to any confirmed major IT or security incident, such as a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack, phishing email, ransomware or exfiltration of sensitive data.
Why is cyber insurance important ?
In the event of a cyber attack, a company may incur a number of costs. A cyber insurance policy can help offset such costs as loss of profit due to a cyber attack, crisis management, legal investigations, system restoration, ransom payments, compensation claims and fines. The company could also be held responsible for the protection of the data it holds and be held liable.
Combine prevention and incident response preparation
Raise awareness and train employees in cybersecurity risks and data protection to prevent cyberattacks (e.g.: recognize phishing emails and social engineering attacks, apply good password management practices). You will then have a 2-fold strategy: prevention to reduce the risk of cyber-attacks and data leakage, and incident response preparedness to ensure a clear protocol in the event of an incident to ensure the availability, integrity and confidentiality of your data.
Business continuity and disaster recovery
To ensure that your incident response plan is linked to your business needs, ensure integration with a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan that will be tested annually.
How can Secur01 help you?
Secur01 has the compliance expertise, cybersecurity competence and experience of multiple cyber risk mandates for clients of all sizes and industries.
- Would you like to set up a simple, effective and affordable incident response plan?
- Want to confirm whether your company is vulnerable to cyber attacks?
- Need advice on how to navigate the requirements of Act 25 and ensure rapid compliance?
- Have you received a cyber insurance questionnaire from your insurer and need help answering it?
- Would you like a security diagnostic of your infrastructure?
- Would you like a team of experts to take full charge of IT compliance and data protection in managed mode?
Contact us to ensure your compliance, increase your cyber resilience, reduce your risks, and optimize your costs.
