Privacy
Assess and Respond to a Personal Data Breach
A suspected personal data breach is contained, risk to individuals is assessed, and notification decisions are timely and documented.
The process
Work it in this order.
- Activate the incident and privacy response teams, record when the organization became aware, preserve evidence, and establish legal and operational decision owners.
- Contain the exposure without destroying evidence by revoking access, correcting configuration, recalling disclosures, or isolating affected systems as authorized.
- Determine what personal data, people, jurisdictions, systems, recipients, dates, and protections such as encryption are involved, and whether data was viewed, altered, exfiltrated, or made unavailable.
- Assess likely harm and severity for affected people, considering sensitivity, identifiability, volume, vulnerable populations, misuse pathways, and effective safeguards.
- Have qualified privacy or legal personnel determine regulator, individual, contractual, insurer, and law-enforcement notification duties and deadlines for each jurisdiction.
- Prepare accurate notifications with known facts, protective actions, contact channels, and updates; avoid unsupported assurances or speculation.
- Remediate the cause, monitor for misuse, maintain the breach record and decision rationale, and review control and response improvements.
Bring this
Inputs the cat will ask for.
- Incident facts and evidence
- Data categories and affected populations
- Jurisdictions and contracts
- Privacy, legal, insurer, and regulator contacts
Router + one playbook
Route first. Choose one.
Cat Paw loads one playbook per task rather than merging several. Start with this router; the remaining paths are workflow-specific candidates it can inspect.
- Router:
cybersecurity-pack skills/cybersecurity-skills/containing-active-breach/SKILL.mdskills/cybersecurity-skills/performing-privacy-impact-assessment/SKILL.mdskills/cybersecurity-skills/conducting-gdpr-compliance-assessment/SKILL.md
Guardrails
The boundaries travel with the prompt.
- Route legal interpretations and notification decisions to qualified counsel or the data protection officer.
- Do not delay containment solely to complete the full investigation, but preserve evidence and document changes.
- Share personal data and breach details only with authorized recipients through approved channels.
Done means
A checkable finish.
The exposure is contained, affected scope and risk are documented, all applicable notification decisions and deadlines are met or justified, and cause remediation and monitoring have accountable owners.
Sources
Where this process came from.
- www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/data-breach-response-guide-business
- csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/122/final
- csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/61/r3/final
Sources establish the workflow pattern. Reddit and community posts, where present, are treated as practitioner anecdotes rather than universal facts.