It’s never pleasant to discover that you’ve been hacked. The anxiety that it creates makes it difficult to trust the systems that you have in place, especially if important info appears to have been taken by cyber-criminals.

Making the Most Out of a Bad Situation

If you approach the situation with the right mindset, this can be a blessing in disguise. Similar to other major companies and organizations around the world, getting hacked has a profound influence on the quality of security that you implement.

Revealing Vulnerabilities Spurs Action

The fact that you know that you were hacked means that you were able to detect the hack in the first place, which is a step in the right direction. When it comes to intrusion, one of the worst potential outcomes is never discovering the breach, which allows it to happen repeatedly.

In this case, the blessing in disguise revolves around finally taking the necessary action to properly protect the computer systems of your organization.  Similar to large organizations around the world, such as Sony and Ashley Madison, getting hacked should be a loud wake-up call that leads to all stakeholders reconsidering the danger of allowing their systems to be vulnerable to intrusion.

As a result, the awareness that these hacks generate can lead to an increase in online safety for everyone. As large business and governments implement better security and take cyber threats more seriously, the digital landscape becomes more safe for the general public.

Hacks Reveal Unscrupulous Actors

Another blessing in disguise when getting hacked is learning who is behind the malicious activity and what might be done with the stolen information. A recent incident in which Netragard, an anti-hacking and exploit acquisition company, was hacked revealed unscrupulous actions by Netragard that may lead to spreading security exploits instead of stopping them. As a result, both the Hacking Team and Netragard considered the hack to benefit their behavior and policies in the future.

Prevent Recurring Hacks

Getting hacked once is more than enough for you to change the way that you implement security within your organization. The worst response is to do nothing and hope that another attack doesn’t happen just because you changed your password.

Since 1997, WinMagic has been producing award-winning encryption solutions. We were awarded the 2015 CATAAlliance Outstanding Product Achievement Award, and the 2014 SearchSecurity Readers’ Choice Award for the Best of Encryption.