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You’ve Been Hacked: What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting a Cyber Attack

Executive staring at laptop screen contemplating what to do after a cyber attack on company

Your worst nightmare has just happened. You are woken up in the middle of the night by a phone call notifying you that your customer/client database has been hacked. Millions of pieces of your clients’ personal information have been exposed or may even have become unavailable – this includes their identities, emails, passwords, credit card records and more. What now?

Cyber-attacks are one of the largest threats to your business, but let’s be honest, not top-of-mind. The reality though is that cyber-attacks occur so frequently that it is not a matter of if, but when getting hacked will occur.

Data is your businesses’ largest asset. In the digital age, data is the means to doing business. How do you conduct business without it? Sure, there are temporary solutions, but they aren’t scalable or a long-term solution for your organization. Without access to reliable and accurate data, your business is shot. All work has suddenly come to a halt.

You’ve Been Hacked

What do you do after your organization has fallen victim to a cyber-attack? Will your business recover?

At Vervint, we work with organizations on everything from back-up and disaster recovery to a full cyber-recovery solution. Principal Architect Dave Chinn sat down with us to explain the crucialness of organizations acting to protect their largest assets at stake: their data. During our conversation, he discussed the Cyber Recovery solution that can protect your business’ most valuable data from being hacked. He also defined how it differs amongst other backup solutions and explains the benefits organizations will receive.

A: Cyber recovery is an air-gapped solution that provides an immutable backup copy of your primary business data. The cyber recovery solution completely separates backup copy from the primary data, making it difficult to physically access the data or change it. It is perhaps the most protective data protection solution, yet the most unknown and misunderstood. Executive leaders often consider their business’ largest asset as their employees or products, when in fact it is their organization’s data.

A: These three solutions are closely related; however, each has their own distinct use cases.

Backup software is simple, yet effective. Think of cloud storage. It allows a separate copy of a document to be stored in a catalog. These exact copies can later be used to restore original content in the event of data loss or getting hacked. This is the baseline data recovery solution for your business, and often comes in play when there is human error.

Disaster Recovery involves a preparation plan to get business up and running when things go up in flames (figuratively or literally) due to natural or human disaster. A disaster recovery plan should be set in place for business continuity. However, a disaster recovery solution cannot fully recover all subsets of data.

Cyber Recovery provides complete restart capability for a specific subset of your data. This includes re-running business and recovering critical data in an appropriate amount of time. The subset of data specifically protected under a cyber recovery solution is so protected that copies of recovered data live in a cyber vault, typically stored in a physical, secure location.

Which data recovery plans are best for your business? The first step is to identify the risk level for your organization. Take this assessment to discover your risk level and learn more information.

A: A cyber-attack occurs every 39 seconds (University of Maryland) and can result in an overall average of $13 million in losses due to cyber-crime (Accenture). Your data is at risk for hackers’ advantage; if you have valuable data that can make money, your business is automatically at risk. Hackers, or bad actors, target businesses of all sizes, and across all industries. It takes one cyber threat, and your entire network could be dismantled within minutes. No one is immune from getting hacked.

A cyber recovery solution can reduce the risks and provide you with the ability to recover your business in an acceptable period in the case of a cyber-attack. Consumers are actively searching to do business with organizations they feel their information is safe with. Securing and protecting your consumer’s data results in a more credible business, one in which your customers will feel confident is looking out for them.

Why Vervint?

Here at Vervint, we are passionate about helping your business find the right backup solution that best fits your organization’s needs. Whether that is starting with a solid backup data solution, curating a disaster recovery plan, or protecting a critical subset of data with cyber recovery, Vervint is by your side. If you want to guide your organization through this trying period or need assistance selecting a cyber recovery plan, contact our team today.

About the Author

Anna Ramirez

Author Title

Anna Ramirez is a Marketing Specialist at Vervint and a graduate of Grand Valley State University. She brings vast marketing experience through her previous internships and undergrad work. She is passionate about continuous, lifelong learning and looks forward to empowering her curiosity through both personal and work-related experiences.