The purpose of the policy is to establish the goals and the vision for the breach response process. This policy will clearly define to whom it applies and under what circumstances, and it will include the definition of a breach, staff roles and responsibilities, standards and metrics (e.g., to enable prioritization of the incidents), as well as reporting, remediation, and feedback mechanisms. The policy shall be well publicized and made easily available to all personnel whose duties involve data privacy and security protection.

CrowdFiber’s Information Security's intentions for publishing a Data Breach Response Policy are to focus significant attention on data security and data security breaches, and how CrowdFiber’s established culture of openness, trust and integrity should respond to such activity. CrowdFiber Information Security is committed to protecting CrowdFiber's employees, partners and the company from illegal or damaging actions by individuals, either knowingly or unknowingly.

This policy mandates that any individual who suspects that a theft, breach, or exposure of CrowdFiber’s protected data or CrowdFiber’s sensitive data has occurred must immediately provide a description of what occurred via email to security@crowdfiber.com. This email address is monitored by CrowdFiber’s Information Security Administrators. This team will investigate all reported thefts, data breaches and exposures to confirm if a theft, breach, or exposure has occurred. If a theft, breach, or exposure has occurred, the Information Security Administrator will follow the appropriate procedure in place.

Confirmed Theft, Data Breach, or Exposure of Protected CrowdFiber Data or Sensitive CrowdFiber Data

As soon as a theft, data breach, or exposure containing CrowdFiber protected data or CrowdFiber sensitive data is identified, the process of removing all access to that resource will begin.

The CTO will chair an incident response team to handle the breach or exposure.

The team will include members from:

  • IT Infrastructure
  • IT Applications
  • Finance (if applicable)
  • Legal
  • Communications (if applicable)
  • Customer Success (if customer data is affected)
  • Human Resources (if applicable)
  • The affected unit or department that uses the involved system or output or whose data may have been breached or exposed
  • Additional departments based on the data type involved, and additional individuals as deemed necessary by the CTO

Work with Forensic Investigators

As provided by CrowdFiber’s cyber insurance, the insurer will need to provide access to forensic investigators and experts that will determine how the breach or exposure occurred, the types of data involved, the number of internal/external individuals and/or organizations impacted, and will analyze the breach or exposure to determine the root cause.

Develop a Communication Plan

Work with CrowdFiber’s communications, legal and human resource departments to decide how to communicate the breach to: a) internal employees, b) the public, and c) those directly affected.

Roles & Responsibilities

  • Sponsors are those members of CrowdFiber’s community that have primary responsibility for maintaining any particular information resource. Sponsors may be designated by any CrowdFiber Executive in connection with their administrative responsibilities, or by the actual sponsorship, collection, development, or storage of information.
  • Information Security Administrator is that member of the CrowdFiber’s community, designated by the CTO or the Director of Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure, who provides administrative support for the implementation, oversight, and coordination of security procedures and systems with respect to specific information resources in consultation with the relevant Sponsors.
  • Users include virtually all members of CrowdFiber’s community to the extent they have authorized access to information resources, and may include staff, trustees, contractors, consultants, interns, temporary employees and volunteers.
  • The Incident Response Team shall be chaired by Executive Management and shall include, but will not be limited to, the following departments or their representatives: IT-Infrastructure, IT-Application Security, Communications, Legal, Management, Financial Services, Customer Success, and Human Resources.

Enforcement

Any CrowdFiber personnel found in violation of this policy may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment. Any third party partner company found in violation may have their network connection terminated.

Definitions

  • Encryption or encrypted data – The most effective way to achieve data security. To read an encrypted file, you must have access to a secret key or password that enables you to decrypt it. Unencrypted data is called plain text.
  • Plain text – Unencrypted data.
  • Hacker – A slang term for a computer enthusiast, i.e., a person who enjoys learning programming languages and computer systems and can often be considered an expert on the subject(s).
  • Personally Identifiable Information (PII) - Any data that could potentially identify a specific individual. Any information that can be used to distinguish one person from another and can be used for de-anonymizing anonymous data can be considered PII.
  • Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) - Any data that telecommunications services such as local, long distance, and wireless telephone companies acquire about their subscribers.
  • Protected data - See PII and CPNI
  • Information Resource - The data and information assets of an organization, department or unit.
  • Safeguards - Countermeasures, controls put in place to avoid, detect, counteract, or minimize security risks to physical property, information, computer systems, or other assets. Safeguards help to reduce the risk of damage or loss by stopping, deterring, or slowing down an attack against an asset.
  • Sensitive data - Data that is encrypted or in plain text and contains PII or CPNI data. See PII and CPNI above.