You’ve Been the Victim of a Cyberattack: What Do You Do Now?

If you find yourself in a position where your business has been hacked, it can be devastating for productivity and efficiency, not to mention the security of your company’s assets—personnel or otherwise. It’s quite easy for even seasoned professionals to expose themselves to these attacks, so how should you respond if you’re the one who has been hacked? That’s what we’re going to discuss today.

Determine How You Got Hacked

There are plenty of ways you could have gotten hacked. For one, there could be a vulnerability within your operating system that led to a system infiltration. Someone could sabotage your efforts at security from the inside. You could have clicked on the wrong link or installed malware on your device. At the end of the day, it’s hard at the moment to determine the cause of the hack; all you know is that you have been compromised somehow, and you have to take action to prevent further damage.

What Should You Do?

Once you’ve figured out you have been hacked, you need to take appropriate action. Here are two ways you can keep a hacking attack from creating too much pandemonium for your organization.

Change Your Passwords

If you have access to your account, then the first thing you should do is change your passwords and give anyone who has infiltrated your account the boot. This will often be enough to prevent further damage from being done. Just keep in mind that if you’re one of those people who use the same password for everything, you’ll have to change the password everywhere you currently use it (and set up different passwords for each account while you’re at it).

Your passwords should be strong and backed up by multi-factor authentication. If you use a password manager, you can more effectively take advantage of strong passwords for maximum account security.

Ask for Help

The fact of the matter is that it’s really hard for people to determine how they were hacked in the first place, making it also quite challenging to take action. You’ll want to get in touch with your IT security resources, if they exist, to help you figure out what went wrong and what you can do about it. Furthermore, you should take preventative measures for the next time you encounter situations like this, like training your staff or yourself, and implementing innovative security tools that can keep threats at bay.

If you think you have become the victim of a hacking attack, don’t hesitate to call the professionals at Horne & Benik. Our dedicated team of technicians will walk you through the process of recovering from such an attack and help you navigate this stressful situation. To learn more, call us today at (603) 499-4400.