Every organization is at risk for a cyberattack, making it crucial for companies to prepare their defense against an attack and plan to deal with the aftermath of a cyberattack occurs.

Cyber insurance is important to ensure you have the means to mitigate some of the expenses incurred after a cyber attack; it is important to take proper preventative measures to keep an attack from happening.

To be proactive, an organization can use cybersecurity exercises to test their defenses and measure their responses to different cyberattack situations. With cybersecurity exercises, you can find your weak spots, improve company technology and process, and you can use the information gathered to create recovery plans that will help minimize fallout.

Here a few tips for making the most out of your cybersecurity exercise:

Review Your Cybersecurity Exercise and Feedback

To improve your defenses and overall response to an attack, you need to thoroughly examine the exercise and the feedback from the participants. Conduct a discussion of the feedback, any problems that came up, and review your company’s strengths and weaknesses in cybersecurity.

You also need to evaluate how the exercise participants handled the cyberattack and look for areas where your current processes fell short or were not properly followed. When evaluating the participants, consider asking yourself questions such as:

• How quickly and effectively was the cyberattack detected, and the scope determined?
• Was the sensitive information properly protected?
• Did the participants in the exercise work and communicate effectively with colleagues?
• Did participants follow instructions and make the right choices?

Create and Implement an Action Plan

Once you’ve determined what works and what doesn’t with your cybersecurity, you need to craft a plan to alleviate the issues you found. Your plan will need to include a recommendation for improvement and the specific actions that the company needs to take to address the identified issues. While making these recommendations, be realistic. Make sure they are achievable actions that can be done at a reasonable cost.  Your plan should include elements such as:

• Updates to processes and procedures for incident response and business continuity
• Staff training recommendations
• Enhanced or new security controls
• Software tool suggestions

We hope these tips help you get the most out of your cybersecurity exercise. To learn more about cyber insurance, contact Quantum Source Insurance Group today!