Some people might say that cyber breaches are becoming more frequent, but we just think that we’re actually becoming more aware of them. This year alone there has been hacks at Quora, Uber, Amazon, Facebook, Marriott, FIFA, Google+, British Airways, T-Mobile… the list goes on and on. And some companies have dealt with them better than others. There’s no doubt that cyber breaches can cause financial and reputational harm, but they can be a good thing if you take the right action.
Cyber breaches create an opportunity for improvement
Cyber breaches can be a trigger for change. You shouldn’t simply sit back and ignore what’s happened, you have to take action. And regulatory or client pressure might force this on you. Whatever the nature of the breach, it will highlight opportunities for improving your cybersecurity strategy.
Force you to face the threat
It’s all too easy to think it won’t happen to you. Until it happens to you.
Organisations, and the people within them have a tendency to bury their heads in the sand and think they won’t fall victim to cyber attacks. But when it happens, they’re forced to deal with it head-on and take corrective action.
Get to the root cause of the problem
Once you’ve had a cyber breach, there’ll need to be an investigation to identify the root cause. Then you will need to identify opportunities to prevent this happening again. Which if carried out, will strengthen your organisational resilience for the future.
Time to re-engage with staff
Information security is often left to senior managers and IT departments to deal with, but we believe that infosec is the responsibility of everyone in an organisation. Cyber breaches provide a perfect opportunity to re-engage with the entire staff and make the conversation about security.
Build your brand’s reputation
Cyber breaches also provide a brilliant opportunity to build brand reputation. If you’re quick off the mark and show that you’re taking actions to remedy the situation and look after your customers, clients and staff, it can boost your reputation rather than damage it.
Tests your incident management process
A real-life cyber breach is an uncomfortable and realistic test of your incidence response plans and capacity. It can give you an insight into hackers’ methods so that you can reinforce your organisation against them and enables you to improve your process.
Strengthens the case for further investment
Sometimes you need an incident to occur to convince the powers that be that they need to guard against them and invest more into an organisation’s security awareness strategy and programme.
Helps unblock things
Cyber breaches put organisations under the spotlight and force them to overcome their internal resistance to change by giving them no choice but to take action. Which can only be a good thing.
Provides salience
Known as the salience bias in behavioural science, people focus more on what seems relevant. Cyber breaches make infosec both relevant and timely, and staff are more likely to listen when engaging on the topic internally.
Cyber breaches can create good outcomes if you respond quickly and use the attack as an opportunity to build your brand reputation, test your incident management process, improve your information security and raise awareness. It’s all about how you approach them.
