What to do when you have a cyber-attack?

The evidence is clear. Cyber-attacks are on the rise and small businesses in Australia are feeling the brunt of them. At some point your business will experience a cyber-attack and if successful the consequences could be disastrous.

To help you we have created a simple guide for small business owners based on expert opinion in the IT, cyber-attack recovery and insurance industries.

What to when you have a cyber-attack.

1.       Don’t Panic

It’s happened. How you now respond will have a critical bearing on the success of your recovery plan. So be calm, breathe deeply and know that this too will pass.

2.       Put your cyber disaster recovery plan in action

Just as when your business has a fire you have an evacuation plan, so it is with a cyber security breach. Both events are unlikely, though a cyber-attack is 10 times more likely than a fire, but with equally devastating effects. Put your recovery plan to work. *

3.       Contain the breach

Do not try to fix it, delete everything or pay the ransomware yourself. The cyber security experts need the evidence to assess how it happened, who was responsible, the impact and to develop remediation plans.

However, do:

• disconnect from the internet

• disable remote access

• change business critical passwords

4.       If you have cyber insurance, call your broker. Immediately

This is why you have cyber insurance. So that the experts are called in to fix the mess. Put in place a remediation plan. And your broker is the go-to person to pull it all together.

Claim time is the moment of truth and your broker is your advocate.

5.       Contact your IT team

Once you have spoken to your broker then contact your IT team. They will provide the support that the cyber security experts will need. But please be aware that detection, elimination and remediation of cyber security breaches are skilled jobs.

Alternatively, if you don’t have cyber insurance, they will need to put into effect their disaster recovery programme for a cyber-attack. It is likely to involve the very significant out of pocket expenses.

6.       Get cracking yourself

If you have neither cyber insurance nor an IT team it’s all on you. In which case you will need to do all the following:

·         Call in specialist IT cyber security team

·         Determine the scope and nature of the breach which could result in any number of the following:

o   Notify the Office of the Australian Information Commission if there has been any loss of private data

o   Notify any affected customers and suppliers.

o   Put in place a compensation plan for any losses that your customers, or suppliers had.

·         Fix the breach and put in place actions to prevent any future attacks being successful.

All of which will take a lot of your time, focus and money.

If you want and help with this, even if it is just to start putting a plan in place please feel free to contact your insurance broker. It’s what we do for all our clients that ask.

*For those interested the Chubb Cyber Index is a useful resource to learn more about cyber risks https://chubbcyberindex.com/#/splash