Hack attack!

Mastering the dark side of cyber: recovery and resilience

The cyber threat landscape is constantly changing, making cyber defence a veritable challenge. No organisation is immune. It’s not a question of if, but when. PwC’s Cybersecurity Team supports clients when attacks from the dark side hit.

After the security service alerted an automotive company, of a possible breach, the company, our client, called us in immediately. It was clear on arrival that the situation was not under control and that our client’s security measures were extremely limited. This was the first time the company’s management had faced such a crisis, and all actions undertaken before were not effective.

We took over immediately, to assess, contain and remediate the incident. We pulled all back-end systems offline. Then we started the investigation, with the goal of tracking down the attacker. To immediately increase the security visibility, we worked with the client’s IT team to implement industry standard tools over the weekend, a process that usually takes six months. Once successfully implemented, we ran forensic analysis of compromised systems and estimated the scope of the incident. We lead workshops to inform and engage all stakeholders. From then on, we acted as one team with a single goal: to get the systems back on and going strong as fast as possible.

We increased our client’s security visibility to trace the attacker’s access activities and gathered forensically sound evidence to handover to the police. We increased security awareness at the client, identified key areas for improvement and corresponding actions, and developed a roadmap to help the company increase their cyber resilience. Our Cybersecurity Team helped the client handle a serious cyber incident and emerge from the crisis even stronger than before.