How to respond to a Cyber Incident

It’s probably not a matter of ‘if’ you’ll be impacted by a cyber incident, but ‘when’. And since the average breach takes more than six months to detect, it may well already have happened

If you have suffered a cyber incident then here are the steps to immediately consider:

  • The Technical Fix: identify and the fix problem(s), and do forensics to diagnose the cause and full scope.
  • The Legal Defence: rapidly develop a legal strategy and a legally defensible narrative based on the forensics.
  • The Brand Defence: the standard PR approach to crisis management simply won’t work in a cyber incident and may even make things worse.
  • The Social Response: use trusted voices to counter misinformation with authority and counter hysteria with reach and credibility.

Exacty what you need to do for each of these steps is outlined below.

Are your crisis ready?

Be prepared for any cyber incident

Don’t wait till an incident strikes to see how well prepared you are.

You’re NOT GDPR compliant unless you regularly test, assess and evaluate your processes. You not only need to do scenario planning, but you also need to run immersive simulation exercises to ensure that your team is crisis prepared.

Get in touch now so that we can set up an immersive simulation exercise to see how your team copes with a cyber incident.

Step 1: The Technical Fix

Get expert help from a specialist security response team to identify and the fix problem(s), and do forensics to diagnose the cause and full scope. Getting an immediate fix to resolve the problem, stem any data loss and recover any systems is essential. Any delay will magnify the impact of the incident and damages incurred.

We partner with leading experts in IT system troubleshooting and cyber incident response that have experience fixing major incidents for governments and large corporates in the EU and elsewhere.

Step 2: The Legal Defence

Seek expert advice in cyber and data law to rapidly develop a legal strategy and a legally defensible narrative based on the forensics. Having the right legal strategy and narrative are both essential to limit legal and regulatory exposure.

Based in the UK and led by the top UK QC on cyber and data law, our legal team consists of a core group of five cyber law experts, with an extended legal team of 140 based in the UK, EU, Dubai, and Singapore.

Step 3: The Brand Defence

Get expert cyber comms support to help your internal and agency teams deal with the added complexity and enhanced comms workload. The standard PR approach to crisis management simply won’t work in a cyber incident and may even make things worse.

Led by principle consultants based in Portugal and the UK, we have an extended team of reputation and crisis management experts covering a wide number of countries and languages.

Step 4: The Social Response

Get top global privacy/security influencers to act as trusted voices to counter misinformation with authority and hysteria with reach and credibility. To counter misinformation and hysteria when your own credibility is at an all-time low, you’ll need the support of authoritative opinion leaders in privacy and security.

Our core team is based in offices in London, Seattle, and Sydney and is supported by a team of key opinion leaders that are predominantly based in the US and EU, but have truly global reach.