If you're not prepared to deal with the consequences of bringing in the authorities, making that phone call can be a bad business move. There will come a day when you get tagged by a hacker. But once you figure out how it happened and close the hole, should you call the cops? Calling in the authorities is a hard decision to make because it could result in more painboth business and personal. If you don’t notify law enforcement and you’re hacked again, you’ll lose credibility with upper management. There can be business insurance ramifications for not filing a police report, and of course, lack of legal involvement means that the culprit will never get prosecuted in a criminal court.On the other hand, many level-headed executives worry that investigators will freeze systems and possibly even seize mission-critical equipment. In complicated cases, they might have to. A landmark case occurred in 1990 when the Secret Service impounded computer equipment and data owned by Steve Jackson Games in connection with an unrelated investigation involving one of its employees. Collateral business damage from the investigation almost forced the company to go under. Every copy of the current product under development was taken. Some files were given back in a month, but data was destroyed. The hardware itself was kept for four months. The company sued the government, and was awarded $50,000 plus legal fees. Here are some pitfalls of calling in the authorities: Any empowered employee (an ambiguous legal term that can cover anyone from a systems administrator to a manager or executive) can grant consent for a search that otherwise couldn’t be executed without a warrant. Some circumstances permit unrelated information uncovered in a search to be used by the government as evidence of other crimes. Your company will lose all control over the prosecution. This matters if it looks like an inside job. The constitutional test for privacy is based on “reasonable expectation of privacy.” When customer information enters third-party hands, its legal protection is diminished.By the way, nothing that I’ve said necessarily applies to state and local law enforcement. The training varies enormously by locale, so I would discourage calling in the police under any but the simplest cases where the motive is clearly theft. If it’s a denial-of-service attack, notify CERT (www.cert.org). Deciding whether to call in the authorities is a business decision. If there isn’t a clear goal, such as prosecution of a thief, it may not be worth the risk. No one can guarantee that assets won’t be taken. The Department of Justice’s guidelines for computer seizure (www.usdoj.gov) should be required reading for CSOs. It explicitly warns that “…If the agents cannot learn where the information is stored or cannot create a working mirror image for technical reasons, they may have no choice but to seize the computer and remove it.”The moral of this story is, if you don’t need to call, don’t. If you do call, be prepared to cooperate. Related content news Multibillion-dollar cybersecurity training market fails to fix the supply-demand imbalance Despite money pouring into programs around the world, training organizations have not managed to ensure employment for professionals, while entry-level professionals are finding it hard to land a job By Samira Sarraf Oct 02, 2023 6 mins CSO and CISO CSO and CISO CSO and CISO news Royal family’s website suffers Russia-linked cyberattack Pro-Russian hacker group KillNet took responsibility for the attack days after King Charles condemned the invasion of Ukraine. By Michael Hill Oct 02, 2023 2 mins DDoS Cyberattacks feature 10 things you should know about navigating the dark web A lot can be found in the shadows of the internet from sensitive stolen data to attack tools for sale, the dark web is a trove of risks for enterprises. Here are a few things to know and navigate safely. By Rosalyn Page Oct 02, 2023 13 mins Cybercrime Security news ShadowSyndicate Cybercrime gang has used 7 ransomware families over the past year Researchers from Group-IB believe it's likely the group is an independent affiliate working for multiple ransomware-as-a-service operations By Lucian Constantin Oct 02, 2023 4 mins Hacker Groups Ransomware Cybercrime Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe