Understanding what action to take if a cyberattack occurs could be the difference between your business surviving or closing down. Here are our top tips to think about if your business is hacked by cyber criminals:
Once you know there is a problem you must act. You need to change all your business passwords and run anti-virus programmes immediately to try to prevent further problems.
You need to let your web hosting company know as quickly as possible as they might be able to help you to recover systems and remove nasty programmes.
Do not be tempted to bury your head in the sand – not telling customers is what destroys company reputations. Tell them what has happened, how it might affect them and what you are doing about it.
Speak to your lawyers straight away for advice around any potential legal action and what you are required to do by law, particularly when it comes to reporting a data breach.
As well as your customers you need to let any third party suppliers, employees, contractors and anyone else who might be affected, know about what has happened.
Once you have told everyone you need to focus on getting professional help, like from us here at Clifton IT, to get your systems all completely cleaned, repaired and working properly again. Using a professional company to do this for you will give you peace of mind and help to show customers how seriously you are taking the problem.
After the initial attack announcement you need to keep everyone you have told updated on your progress so they can see what you are doing to prevent this happening again. This is another essential step to help protect your business reputation.
Here at Clifton IT we have specialists in dealing with cyberattack problems who can help businesses get back on their feet, and advise on action to take and systems which could help improve your cyber security in the future. Please do get in touch if we can help.
If you are unsure of what IT requirements you have, or how to upgrade your existing system, book in for a free IT health check. We will assess all of your systems and plans and come up with a solution for your individual IT needs.