How to Respond to a Data Breach

What to Do
Einstein offered multiple tips for retailers to mitigate the impact to their business from a data breach:

• Adopt a WISP - written information security program. This can reduce your potential exposure to a breach by up to 25 percent, Einstein said.
• Encrypt data that's transmitted.
• Ensure that all of the third-party vendors that you work with comply with your company's data security standards. Einstein noted that in most retail data breaches a third party is responsible for the compromised data, not the retailer itself.
• Spell out who is on the data security/breach response team. Legal counsel should always part of the team.
• Have form documents ready to go in the event of a breach rather than having to write them from scratch.
• Draft a PCI security incident response plan. This is good to have, but don't rely on this solely, Einstein cautioned.
• Investigate purchasing cybersecurity insurance. Be sure to find out the specific cost coverage you'll receive - e.g., will investigative and notification costs be covered - as well as what the exclusions are. And of course you'll want to find out the cost of the premium.