Cyber security issues are happening every day for businesses and consumers alike. Scammers are working harder than ever to uncover personal and private information they can use for financial theft and other crimes. While the best form of protection is to have security in place and be vigilant about protecting data, there, unfortunately, is always a risk that a cyber incident can occur. When it does, you should be ready and prepared for what to do next to ensure that issues don’t turn into larger ones.

Here are a few tips for getting through cyber security incidents.

Understand What Happened

Once you’ve become a victim of a security breach, you’ll need to first understand what happened before as you work to clean things up. While it may take some time to understand why the breach occurred, knowing what was compromised and who it affected can make the steps of notifying, recovering, and protecting information easier now that it has already happened.

Locate All Comprised Assets

After you’ve completed your assessment and understand what happened during this breach, you should track down any documents, files, or other assets that are affected. For example, if your breach included the loss of private data you should find any and all areas where you store this data and check on its privacy and tighten up security as well as scrub any potential hazardous files and malware that could be present. 

Notify Anyone At Risk

The final step is one of the most important and also the one the most dread having to do. You should inform everyone who needs to know about the breach that it has happened so they can protect themselves and you are transparent per industry regulations. This may come as a formal letter to regulators, customers, or family members and detailing what information has been breached as well as offering help and support during and after the incident recovery phase.