Traditional incident response is a reactive process to repair any damage caused by a cyber incident. All of the processes, tools and technology used in incident response are designed to identify what happened and what data was compromised. The proliferation of data across company networks makes it harder for businesses to understand what data types they have, who has access to data and how their data is used. Without an accurate data inventory identifying whether data was accessed or compromised can be a frustrating and drawn-out process.
All businesses need to adopt a proactive approach to incident response that starts by discovering, classifying and tracking sensitive data that’s used and stored within the organization. Ensuring an up-to-date data inventory supports: