How to Acquire the Best Privacy Incident Response Solution for Your Team

Even with the best defense, privacy incidents are inevitable, and the best way organizations can prepare is by proactively implementing incident response technology.

Medium-sized incidents cost global companies $4.24M each time they occurred in 2021, representing a 17% increase from 2020, according to the Ponemon Cost of a Breach Study, 2021. And the cost increases when organizations aren’t prepared. Companies typically have 24 to 72 hours from the time they discover an incident until they must report it, and a delay in reporting can lead to fines upwards of $10 million.

Every business will experience a breach. And no business can afford to not be prepared.

Why Every Business Needs a Privacy Incident Response Solution

Thankfully, we now have dedicated privacy incident management solutions designed to help organizations address the growing risk — and cost — of data breaches. When implemented correctly, privacy incident management software can help maintain regulatory compliance and build customer trust. It does so by helping measurably: 

• Reduce risk: Increase protection of privilege over documents and communications.
• Save time: Empower teams to proactively prepare incident response plans, keep them updated as regulations evolve, and increase collaboration when an incident occurs.
• Decrease costs: Allow for faster and more comprehensive incident response measures without the need for dedicated full-time employees.

Against this backdrop, it’s no surprise that a recent IAPP study finds the majority of organizations now recognize the importance of introducing incident response and/or privacy program management software.

3 Steps to Easily Find and Implement the Right Privacy Incident Response Technologies for Your Business

Despite the potential value that privacy incident management software can deliver, the process of finding and implementing the right technology can prove challenging. The market is exploding with solutions and teams need direction to not only pick the right one for their business, but also to implement it properly for long term success.

So what exactly does it take? How can your team find the right solution and implement it effectively — without the hassle? Start with these three steps (for full details on what it takes, be sure to download our complete guide on best practices for buying privacy tech):

1) Define your business case

First, outline a clear business case for adopting a privacy incident management solution. 

While the need for one might be obvious, going through this process will help you determine your organization’s specific needs (that way you can narrow down your search process) and build an airtight case for budget approvals and cross-functional buy-in (which will be essential further down the line).

Answering questions like these can help define your business case:

• What is the problem today?
• What would an ideal solution look like?
• What specific options are available to deliver on that solution?
• What are the expected positive results to come from solving this problem?

2) Create a detailed requirements checklist for potential solutions

Next, you can use that business case to confidently review the potential solutions available.

Specifically, the business case should help you create a detailed checklist of requirements you want to see in any technology you implement. Once you have the checklist, you should keep it front and center during the entire search process. It’s important to remember that the best solutions will help your organization rather than creating more work, and you should bake this mindset into the selection process.

Potential features to consider as part of your checklist for privacy incident management software include:

3) Obtain buy-in from key stakeholders

Lastly, you need to obtain buy-in from key stakeholders as early as possible. 

Your privacy team may very well lead the procurement process and own the solution you implement, but the reality is privacy incident response can’t happen in a vacuum. When a breach occurs, you’ll need all hands on deck to respond quickly and completely.

Obtaining this buy-in ahead of time can help reduce the time to respond to an incident by making sure everyone is aware of and aligned on each team’s role in the incident response process and that they understand the workflows they need to follow to deliver on the plan.

Key groups from which to secure buy-in typically include:

• General Counsel: Reduce risk and increase efficiency by ensuring legal knows exactly how to respond to an incident.
• Security: Decrease the burden on security by outlining what they need to do when an incident occurs.
• Compliance: Make it easy for compliance to test the effectiveness of controls.
• Risk: Empower risk teams to understand what happened and identify areas for improvement.
• Finance and Procurement: Decrease costs by adopting a more comprehensive and efficient incident response process.
• Business Stakeholders: Reduce risks like reputational damage and loss of customer trust following a breach.

Make Privacy Incident Response an Advantage for Your Business

Privacy incident response can be an advantage or a liability for any business. If you want it to be an advantage, you need to start by upgrading to a modern privacy incident response technology that can help maintain compliance and customer trust.

Fortunately, finding the right solution to deliver on these benefits — one that can reduce risk, save time, and decrease costs — doesn’t have to be difficult. If you follow the three step process outlined here, your privacy team will be well prepared to handle any incidents effectively.

Interested in learning more about what it takes? Download our complete guide, How to Buy Privacy Tech: Best Practices for Acquiring the Privacy Incident Response Solution Your Team Needs.