Emergency Business Response
My Company Has Been Hacked: A Practical Response Checklist
A live breach can escalate from one compromised account to payroll fraud, data exposure, and operational downtime. This page outlines the first-response workflow leaders can use to stabilize risk and recover safely.
1. Declare The Incident And Activate Owners
- Assign incident commander, legal point of contact, and technical lead.
- Define communication channels and decision cadence.
- Capture incident start time, indicators, and known impact areas.
2. Contain Threat Access Without Destroying Evidence
- Disable compromised credentials and rotate privileged account secrets.
- Isolate affected endpoints and servers based on risk tier.
- Block known malicious domains, IPs, and command-and-control indicators.
- Preserve logs, mailbox artifacts, endpoint telemetry, and cloud audit trails.
3. Protect Cashflow, Data, And Trust
- Harden payment approval workflows and out-of-band vendor verification.
- Audit mailbox forwarding, delegate access, and wire instruction changes.
- Identify regulated data involved and prepare notification obligations.
- Coordinate HR and executive comms to prevent internal phishing spread.
4. Eradicate, Recover, And Validate
- Remove persistence mechanisms and unauthorized integrations.
- Patch exploited systems and enforce minimum security baselines.
- Restore services in phases with validation checkpoints.
- Run a lessons-learned review and close prioritized hardening actions.
When To Escalate To External Incident Responders
Escalate immediately if ransomware behavior is detected, privileged identities are compromised, financial fraud attempts are in motion, or evidence preservation is required for legal/regulatory response.
Call (424) 625-4797 Activate Response Support
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a business do first after a cyberattack?
Isolate impacted systems, preserve evidence, lock privileged access, and trigger your incident response process immediately.
Should we shut everything down?
Not always. Containment should be coordinated to avoid destroying forensic evidence or disrupting critical recovery paths.
When do legal and cyber insurance teams need to be involved?
As early as possible. Counsel and carrier requirements can impact breach-notification timelines, evidence handling, and reimbursement.
Can we keep operating while responding?
Yes, with a staged containment plan that prioritizes business-critical workloads while the response team investigates and eradicates threat access.