Don’t Get Tongue Tied When a Data Breach Happens to You
Recently RSA Security’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Holly Rollo and I sat down and put our brains together to flush out the absolute necessities of what needs to be in place when the unthinkable happens to a company and/or government organization….that being….you don’t have a data breach communication and response plan when a cyber breach happens.
Below is a highlight of what Holly and I had to say in a recent Harvard Business Review feature titled “Your Company Needs a Communication Plan for Data Breaches”…..
In an instant, any business can find itself in the frightening position of watching the brand you’ve worked so hard to build being taken to its knees by a cyber breach. Few things are more damaging to a brand’s reputation than a hack in the headlines, and in the event of a public security incident, it’s highly likely that the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and the Chief Security Officer (CSO) will be the first people the CEO looks to and says “What do we do now?”
When a data breach happens, there is nothing worse than trying to figure out how to manage the crisis on the fly as it is still happening. That’s why every strategic marketing plan, and every company’s overall security strategy, should incorporate a data breach communication plan.
Even a rumor of a breach can trigger a communications crisis. Here’s a generalized scenario similar to cases we’ve experienced: A hot new mobile technology company lands one of the most successful IPOs of the year. A hacker going by the name of ‘Tumbleweed’ enters a forum and brags that the device can be hacked. Other hackers begin to post on different forums, and a newspaper picks it up. A news cycle begins. Senior engineers in the company respond to the forums by denying the hacking claims. Hacker forums go crazy and issue a “bug bounty” to try to compromise the device, with some claiming success………
Read the complete Harvard Business Review feature here….