Caught in the breach – what to do first

Security experts have been saying for more than a decade that it is “not if, but when” an organization will be hacked. So, the more relevant question, posed in the title of a panel discussion at Wednesday’s MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is: “You Were Hacked: Now What?”

Indeed, given that there is no sure way to prevent every intrusion by so-called, “determined adversaries,” much of the defense playbook has shifted to incident response (IR). And that, said panelists, if done quickly and correctly, can mitigate the damage attackers can cause, even if they make it inside a network.

“Hacking is an action,” said Andrew Stanley, CISO of Phillips. “A breach is the outcome. So we spend more time on the hack than the breach. We want to know how, why – what was the intent – when and where. That’s what the C-suite wants to know more than the nature of the breach.” Answering those questions is what helps make the response, and therefore containing the damage, more effective, he added.

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