Cyber Security Response Team (CERT)
Cyber crime has become one of the biggest risks for businesses. New cases of extortion become known almost daily, often involving demands for sums in the millions and the threat of far greater damage for those affected.
Business managers are obliged to adequately protect the company against such risks and to prepare for emergencies.
Then decisions must be made immediately, e.g.: Is the IT recoverable? Does the company pay ransom and is that allowed? What are the obligations towards third parties (insurers, capital market, data protection authority)? What are the liability risks and how can they be limited?
Such crisis situations require specific know-how and a well-coordinated team that, together with the affected parties, enables the systems to be cleaned up, the business processes to be restored and the damage to be limited under the greatest possible time pressure. At the same time, management decisions must be legally supported, sound and well documented to avoid personal liability risks.
What does management need to do?
- Ensure physical security - securing office space, servers, storage media, network components, and access points.
- Managing IT properly - are all IT systems in use in the company known at all and are they maintained according to requirements?
- Logically secure systems - access control, 2-factor authentication, introduction of a need-to-know principle, encryption of data carriers
- Secure networks and communication channels -Network segmentation, malicious email filtering, and Internet communication monitoring.
- Set personnel measures - awareness and security training, guidelines and directives for employees on the secure handling of information and IT
- Monitor IT systems - Implement the appropriate tools and use them correctly
- Create backups and plan for system failure - Requirement-based backups reduce the risk of data loss due to failure, theft, or encryption Trojans
- Business continuity management - Ensuring business continuity even in the event of system or service failure
- Consider security as early as the design stage of new systems and programs
- Have a contingency plan - together with external specialists, put together an internal cyber response team - usually consisting of management, CISO, internal IT, external IT security specialist, internal and external legal, internal and external communications, finance, auditor.
- Set legal measures to minimize risk - e.g., cyber risk insurance, liability and risk-minimizing provisions in supply contracts.
How we can support you:
- Definition of internal company procedures, escalation and decision-making processes, risk-consequence assessments, review of insurance contracts, labor law and the other legal corporate environment
- Independent safety review to measure safety levels
- Penetration tests to simulate hacker attacks
- Secure conceptual design of IT infrastructures and applications
- IT manuals and organizational guidelines tailored to the company's risk situation
- Awareness training for all employees or technical training for IT managers, administrators and software developers
- Support in the implementation of security processes and policies
- Consulting in the area of failure safety and business continuity management
In the event of an emergency, your Cyber Emergency Response Team from Völkl and Certitude is at your disposal, already familiar with the framework conditions and key people in the company:
- Deployment of the Cyber Emergency Response Team together with your already defined key functionaries
- Assessment of the risk situation technically and legally
- Advising the management and the supervisory board
- Implementation of legal measures, e.g. insurance law obligations, information of the organs, ...
- Development of solution strategies
- Immediate mitigating measures
- Coordinate and assist with IT cleanup and recovery.
- Advice on reporting obligations (data protection, capital market, contractual partners, ...), support with further measures, e.g. vis-à-vis authorities
After the crisis, we advise you on the adaptation of your IT security concept to meet requirements, negotiations with contractual partners, assertion of recourse claims, etc. Our prevention work minimizes the risk of successful cyber attacks. In a crisis, you have reliable contacts who support you in protecting the company against damages and also the management against personal liability risks.
Voelkl Rechtsanwaelte on April 15, 2020
