Top 10 Tips for Businesses: A Guide to Data Breach Prevention and Response

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The costs of a data breach can be extensive - from the easily calculable costs of notification costs and business loss to the less tangible threats to a company's brand and business continuity. To avoid what sometimes amounts to operational paralysis, an organization's leaders need to follow some basic guidelines.

ID theft expert Brian Lapidus, senior vice president of Kroll's Fraud Solutions, has unique frontline experience helping today's businesses safeguard against and respond to data breaches. Below he offers some important advice that every institution should know about protecting themselves and their customers from the damages of fraud. At Kroll, Lapidus oversees a highly-skilled team that includes veteran licensed investigators specializing in supporting breach victims and restoring individuals' identities to pre-theft status.

1. Look beyond IT security when assessing your company's data breach risks. To eliminate additional threats, a company must evaluate employee exit strategies (HR), remote project protocol, on- and off-site data storage practices and more - then establish and enforce new policies and procedures and physical safeguards appropriate to the findings.

2. Establish a comprehensive pre-breach response plan that will enable decisive action and prevent operational paralysis when a data breach occurs. Your efforts will demonstrate to consumers and regulators that your organization has taken anticipatory steps to address data security threats. Disseminate this plan throughout the management structure to ensure everyone knows what to do in the event of a breach. In preparation, consider the following:

• Who will have a role in reviewing the policies and procedures on a predictable timetable?
  
• What are the physical security elements? When and how will they be tested?

3. Educate employees about appropriate handling and protection of sensitive data. The continuing saga of lost and stolen laptops containing critical information illustrates that corporate policy designed to safeguard portable data only works when employees follow the rules.

4. Thieves can't steal what you don't have. Data minimization is a powerful element of preparedness. The rules are disarmingly simple:

• Don't collect information that you don't need.
  
• Reduce the number of places where you retain the data.
  
• Grant employees access to sensitive data only on an "as needed" basis, and keep current records of who has access to the data while it is in your company's possession.
  
• Purge the data responsibly once the need for it has expired.
  

5. In the event of a merger, all newly acquired systems should go through a thorough data assessment. As the controlling company, it is in your best interest to take inventory of the new data now in your possession. After all, how can you account for information you didn't know you had? This is an area where both internal audit and specialized external resources may be very useful.

6. Beware the Wi-Fi. Use of wireless networks means your data is being transmitted over open airwaves, similar to a radio transmission. If not properly secured, data can easily be picked up by an uninvited party. Many offices, including Kroll's Fraud Solutions headquarters, have disabled Wi-Fi because it cannot be locked down to satisfaction.

7. Retain a third party corporate breach and data security expert to analyze the level of risk and exposure. An evaluation performed by an objective, neutral party leads to a clear and credible picture of what's at stake, without pressuring staff who might otherwise worry that their budgets or careers are in jeopardy if a flaw is revealed.

8. While it is best to encrypt sensitive data, don't rely on encryption as your only method of defense. When used alone, it gives businesses a false sense of security. Although the majority of state statutes require notification only if a breach compromises unencrypted personal information, professionals can and do break encryption codes.

9. Keep current with security software updates (or "patches"). An unpatched system is, by definition, operating with a weak spot just waiting to be exploited by hackers. Admittedly, applying patches takes time and resources, so senior management must provide guidance on allocations and expectations.

10. Hold vendors and partners to the same standards.

For more information call Kroll at 866.419.2052 or visit the Kroll website at krollfraudsolutions.com