With the high profile data breaches that have happened in recent months, cyber or privacy and network security have been topping headlines in various news articles. Most of these articles will tell you and your clients how important it is to have privacy and network security insurance, and also give you tips on how to prevent them from occurring all together. However, what if a data breach has already occurred? Whether it’s your agency or your client’s business this has happened to, what can be done to recover from a breach?
The first thing your client should do if they suffer from a breach is to contact their insurance agency and let them know right away. Making a claim as early as possible will help expedite the process. The following steps, as cited by sources from NetworkWorld.com, should be followed by any type of business that incurs a privacy and network security breach.
Acknowledge the breach with your customers. Letting customers know right away that the breach has occurred, and apologizing for any inconvenience this may cause can go a long way in creating a good customer experience. It also pays to keep customers updated as progress is made on recovering data, or as decisions are made as to handle the breach.
Bring in resources if needed. If your agency, or your clients’ business, does not already have a cyber-incident response team, it may be necessary to bring in some additional resources that have experience with these types of crimes. This might not be needed for smaller cyber-threats, but for breaches that reveal sensitive customer data, it may be essential.
Assume the worst. This will buy time for management to think about what to do in different scenarios. For example, with the Target data breach, even though not all Target customers were affected, Target reached out to each and every one of their customers. Banks and financial institutions made an effort to head off any potential problems as well, automatically offering Target customers new debit and credit cards.
One more additional, but perhaps most important, step to take if affected by a privacy and network security breach, is to give the affected customers a way to get their questions answered, and make sure the staff who answers them is prepared.
Looking beyond the data breach itself into privacy and network security loss recovery is important in any business. At PLRisk Advisors, our Privacy and Network Security Coverage is the solution to helping your customer manage and protect against risk. Please contact us today for more information at (855) 403-5982.
