Securing IT infrastructure is critical to stay competitive in today’s digital-first environment. To mitigate the damage after a breach, businesses should strive to provide proactive customer care to ensure that they can quickly and completely recover from a breach.

A ransomware attack can come at any time, which means that a comprehensive response plan is an immediate and necessary element of every business or organization’s cybersecurity strategy. By planning for a ransomware attack, which could include everything from data backups to ransomware insurance, every business can put its best foot forward to thwart these increasingly common attacks.

Data breaches that compromise people’s personally identifiable information are always concerning, especially when they involve minors. Providing the supportive services necessary to recover from a data breach is the most important, and identity and credit monitoring services is the first place to start. These programs provide people the peace-of-mind necessary to successfully navigate the recovery process.

In the past, tech startups operated with near impunity as they developed new platforms and services to meet our modern moment. Today, shifting consumer sentiments toward data privacy and a cadre of new privacy laws make this proposition more perilous. Instead, startups need to make cybersecurity a top priority from day one because failing to protect customer information can undercut their financial, regulatory, and customer-facing viability.

The cost of a data breach is higher now than ever before, which makes a preventable data breach even more egregious. Consequently, awareness training should be a top priority for every company. The expense of credit and identity monitoring services, reputational damage, and IT upgrades far exceeds the awareness training that can prevent phishing scams from compromising customer data.