How can you create a data breach crisis communication plan?

Before being able to assess accurately, the team should have spent a significant amount of proactive time establishing clear decision criteria to determine its crisis level and response. This involves setting thresholds for action and categorizing each activity to follow, identifying key stakeholders (internal and external) for communication, and determining the escalation path for incidents, which may look different depending on the level of breach, ranging from low, moderate, high, and severe. Those levels should involve how the crisis affects customers, employees, investors, and other key stakeholders, the potential or actual damage to reputation, financial/ and legal impacts, and how far the crisis disrupts operations.

Collaborating across teams is essential to gather comprehensive information about the incident. It's important to involve IT, legal, and PR teams, as well as any other relevant departments, to ensure that you have a full understanding of the breach. This collaborative approach will help you answer key questions. By working together, teams can provide a more accurate assessment of the situation, which is crucial for developing an effective communication strategy and maintaining transparency and trust with your stakeholders.

Gets your facts right. Typically most organisations have a DLP policy which sits with the CISO or the tech head and is monitored by CRO. Get the situation documented for internal consumption with a comprehensive timeline, why it happened and how it has been attempted to be mitigated.

If the first step of how to create a data breach crisis communication plan is to "Assess the situation," any PR practitioner will be at a significant operational disadvantage because of the failure to follow key Pre-crisis Phase steps. Preparation is key: 1. Prepare, plan & test: Messages, communications & network systems; 2. Foster alliances; develop consensus recommendations. Understanding the pattern of a crisis helps communicators anticipate issues to effectively respond. Just like every crisis evolves in phases; your communication must too.

One of a business's most important audiences during a crisis is its employees. Employees can be a business's most effective advocate during a crisis, and they will need to be well-prepared and attended to. Your crisis plan should include prepping employee communications that can be shared in the event of a crisis and a timeline for sharing information. For example, employees should receive critical information before that information is shared with the public or media. If employees are getting their information from newscasts or social media, not only will this create confusion but they will feel unvalued. Plans should also be outlined for managers to verbally dispense information to reduce any possible confusion and stress.

Communication audiences in this scenario can vary. It can typicaly include employees, customers, shareholders and even regulators. Its important to know who you need to reach out to at what juncture and with what message.

Crisis Communication Planning BEFORE an incident: 1. Risk Assessment: Identify potential incidents; 2. Scenario-based planning is crucial to effective crisis response as it prepares team & processes (e.g. who will be affected? likely questions raised by those affected, media & others?); 3. Stakeholders (primary & secondary; internal & external). Understand how they receive information, especially those most impacted; 4. Activation Criteria: What triggers the plan?; 5. Crisis communications procedures (Initial action steps, what incidents require a response? what do we say and who says it?; 6. Crisis Comms Plan objectives

Build trust, but at the same time dont underplay the situation. Talk about broad causes and put people at ease. In times of crisis, the last thing people want is more confusion and lack of clarity. Give your audience clarity.

From my experience, start with knowing your audience and expectations. Write clear, empathetic messages about key issues. Address issues, apologize for any inconvenience, and explain your solutions and preventive measures. Provide helpful direction without using confusing terminology to make your message believable and easy to understand.

One also needs to consider whether or not those channels may be available. Prepare contingency that some regular communication tool is inaccessible and be ready to adjust.

Anticipate potential incidents, then talk with crisis comms professionals who've encountered similar types of crises. Learn from them by simply asking, "what worked?", "what didn't work?", "what were your greatest challenges?" and "If you faced the crisis again, what are the 1-3 steps/procedures you'd do differently and why?"

Before all of this, a firm needs to have a crisis manual in place. It helps preempt certain situations and at provides a framework for guideline to help navigate the situation. Especially in this case, it’s key to first assess where and how the breach happened - and why. Once the core of the problem is fixed, we prepare a regular review process. We then first communicate about this to internal stakeholders and our employees. Only if required, we should communicate anything externally.

- Be prepared for potential data breaches in advance and work with close team members to draft a statement to all stakeholders invovled. - Establish the how, what, and why of the situations and gather facts by discussing the situation with top management along with IT. Understand what compromised the data and who will be affected the most and if there are legalities involved. - Monitor all social channels and firefight any queries from the media that seem negative or potentially damaging to your brand. - Continue to communicate to the stakeholders continuously and focus on assuring the client/stakeholder that the crisis will be handled with care.

Testing Responding to a breach requires a lot of communication. Having a plan for who you need to notify and how you are going to deliver the messages (first-class mail, email, website, etc.) is important. But just as critical is testing to make sure your plan will work in the heat of the moment. Create notification letters. Test secure transfer of files to a mail house. Perform a live call center agent drill. It will all pay off in the end.

As a Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialist, I recommend being proactive on researching and implementing an Identity Theft Protection plan, at the very least on a Voluntary basis for all employees. These can help act as an early warning sign of possible breaches.