Over the last few months we have seen data breaches via social engineering / phishing attacks and ransomware with threat actors threatening to release personal data to encourage payment and of course the staple loss of personal information, through “human error”. All of which present a risk to individuals and loss of their personal identity.
It’s a dynamic situation.
If we think about the coming weeks ahead, we are in a changing situation and hearing bars and restaurants will be opening for business soon. There may be a requirement to take the personal information from those visiting venues to support the important effort of contact tracing. This means businesses need to find a way of managing personal information they receive and have a notification response plan should the information of individuals become compromised.
We understand telling people their personal data has been compromised can be challenging and have an impact on a brands reputation, but with planning this situation can be managed to ensure the business can effectively respond to concerned or anxious customers calling in.
Helping hand for businesses – FREE Response Ready portal
To help businesses we’ve created a portal which is FREE for businesses. This provides useful templates and key steps to support the preparation of a customer facing data breach response.
What’s were seeing in the market today
More businesses are starting to look at the resources and additional support they need to help them manage a response. We’ve seen a change in the way businesses communicate across channels too. What’s really important is businesses understand what resources they need and have the right capability/scalability internally to deliver a notification with confidence and at speed.
Changing email opening behaviour
We’ve seen email communications by far being the most popular distribution channel due to speed and cost effectiveness in the past. More recently, however, especially during the crisis people are receiving more emails and not surprisingly treating unexpected emails with a high degree of suspicion, impacting positive open rates. So important to consider when wanting to reach audiences at scale with an important message, such as loss of personal data.
Physical letters vs email
We’ve seen an increase in physical letter distribution as these are viewed with a greater degree of consumer confidence. This provides the additional benefit of being able to share URLs/links for web monitoring sites in a more trusted way versus an email hyperlink.
Micro-sites to inform
The use of micro-sites to provide information about a data breach versus a main site, to reduce traffic is another area to consider. Adding live agent or chat-bot capability through companies like Experian is another avenue many are now exploring.
It means the flow of inquiries and ability to reassure, react with earnest and get information in front of customer is readily in place.
Being prepared just in case
We’ve learnt that having a communication response strategy in place informs your notification strategy. Sending out mass notifications if you do not have the resources in place to manage the inbound communications can lead to an extremely challenging situation. By planning each of the key components of the response plan, businesses can understand what stagger strategies need to be incorporated around notification to those affected.
Helping you get ready to respond and reassure?
Being prepared is one of the most important actions a business can take. We are being contacted about our pre and post breach services, including contact data quality management, email creation and deployment, call centre resources, frequently asked questions, live chat, chat-bot capabilities and remediation, including credit and web monitoring.
Learn more about Experian’s pre and post breach services or contact one of the team to today to talk through your scenario www.experian.co.uk/databreach.
Do please take advantage of our FREE Response Ready portal and start planning or reach out to the team to talk further about how you can get ready. Contact us at breachresponse@experian.com.