A data breach by a hacker is a nightmare for any CIO, IT manager or business owner. But hacking is no abstract dream; it's painfully real. A recent study found that 72 percent of participating businesses had been hacked the previous year, and more than half expected to be hacked again. If your organization has fallen prey to hackers, you need to take the following measures, at the very least, to keep a bad situation from getting even worse.

• Pull the plug. Until you know where your hacker infiltrated your network, you may need to just shut everything down. It may be terrible for your short-term revenue, but allowing the bad guys to keep siphoning your sensitive data could put you out of business altogether.

• Find the hack. Your Austin IT support team needs to start combing the activity logs and other sources of data to figure out where the hacker entered your system, what information may have gotten revealed or stolen, and how many components the infestation may have affected. If your computers are compromised, you'll need to wipe them and replace all the data with the most current backup – or even replace the affected computers

• Send out the alert. Your customers, business partners and other organizations who depend on you need to know what happened right away. Assure them that the breach is being dealt with and all possible steps are being taken to secure your IT system. Contact the FBI (or other cyber-crime fighting organizations), your business lawyer, executive board and/or compliance teams as needed.

• Make changes. Our Austin IT support team can help you rebuild with stronger security measures and robust disaster recovery solutions. You may even want to shift your system's supervision over to our IT managed services experts so you'll always have state-of-the-art monitoring and troubleshooting in place. Think about it!

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