If you were hacked, would you know what to do? You can’t just keep your fingers crossed, hoping nothing malicious will occur. In this situation, your best option is to act immediately to protect yourself and prevent anything else from happening to your data.
Disaster Recovery Plan or Business Continuity in Action
Having your data compromised is distressing, to say the least. It can happen to anyone, so you can take some solace in knowing you’re not alone. Even businesses such as Equifax and Evernote—which have entire IT teams devoted their protection—have succumbed to cunning hackers. The key to moving on from a disastrous data breach is to develop a plan to minimize the damage and prevent it from happening again.
Determine the Reason for the Hack
The first step to confronting an incident such as this is to take a step back, breathe, and figure out why you were attacked. The answer could be straightforward or there could be a variety of reasons. For example, if your bank account was hacked, the answer is obvious. However, if your email account was the target, the reason could have been to send spam, to request money from your contacts, and more. Knowing the reason for the hack can help you understand how you were breached.
How Did Your Business Get Hacked?
In addition to discovering the reason, you’ll also want to know how the hacker got in. Installing an intrusion protection system or using an intrusion protection service can shed some light on this question. An intrusion protection system or service’s purpose is to monitor your network’s traffic flow. This extra layer of network security usually sits behind your firewall and will detect any malicious attempts toward an application.
Clean Up Your Computer
It’s always possible the hacker invaded your network through your computer. You don’t want to begin the recovery process before this issue is resolved. So you’ll need to clean up your system before you do anything. You can do this by downloading trusted antivirus software. Antivirus software isn’t a perfect solution; these programs often can be hit-or-miss, but it’s the most basic action you can perform.
Reset Your Passwords
It’s recommended that you change your passwords regularly, especially if you’re prone to reusing passwords. In the case of a hack, it’s no longer a recommendation—it will be necessary to reset your passwords. In fact, you should consider all of your login credentials compromised.
Planning Ahead
Too often, people react to being hacked instead of taking steps to protect themselves beforehand. This is where disaster recovery comes in to play. Disaster recovery services provide online data backup so your website can be back up and ready to go in only a matter of hours. Without these cloud backup services, you could end up spending lots of money and an undefined amount of time trying to restore your website.
Detect and Prevent Threats With ANC Group
Is your network secure? At ANC Group we provide a variety of network cybersecurity solutions to protect your organization from cybercriminals, malware, and other cyber threats. Our team is dedicated to providing you with affordable, custom-tailored solutions to meet your budget and business goals. Give our team of cybersecurity experts a call today at (888)424-4863 or visit our Contact Us page to schedule a time to talk.
