Law 25 Incident Response Plan: A How To Guide

If you’re a Quebec resident or do business in Quebec, you should know that Quebec’s Law 25 doesn’t only require companies to protect personal data. It also demands a swift, structured incident response plan for when things go south.

Having a concrete cyber security incident response protocol allows companies to alleviate the potential damage of data breaches over their information, reputation, and finances. Every minute counts towards saving the company’s integrity, preserving team morale, and retaining customer trust.

In this article, we’ll review the incident response measures contained within Law 25 and how Mindsec’s Law 25 compliance automation helps you mitigate the risk of being caught off guard by a cyber incident.

Law 25 Incident Response: What You Need To Know

Law 25 dictates the following as the specific actions businesses must take to reduce the risks of harm done to individuals in the event of a data breach:

• Document and assess every confidentiality incident involving personal data, its impact, and the affected parties.
• Promptly notify the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (CAI) and each of the affected individuals whose data is involved in the incident. Especially if the event poses a risk of serious harm.
• Keep an incident register to prevent similar incidents from occurring again. Even for events that don’t meet the threshold for notification.
• Establish practices at a company-level, like devising an incident response plan or a staff directive, to react quickly and appropriately to these incidents.

In short, beyond prevention and cautionary measures, Law 25 compliance requires companies to have fast, well-defined, and accountable reaction systems that help them minimize the damage.

Incident Response Plan And Risk Mitigation: Best Practices

Law 25 expects organizations not only to respond to incidents, but to anticipate them through due diligence, risk mitigation, and proper compliance. These are some of Mindsec’s best tips for cyber security incident prevention, visibility, readiness, that all information security companies should follow:

1. Map Your Data

Know what personal information you collect, why you collect it, where it’s stored, and who has access to it. Then, keep an up-to-date inventory that includes:

• Data types and sensitivity levels
• Storage locations (cloud, on-premises, third-party)
• Retention timelines and legal bases

2. Limit Exposure by Design

Apply the principle of data minimization by only collecting the data you truly need for operational purposes. Then, make sure to implement clear principles to:

• Destroy or anonymize personal information once its purpose has been fulfilled
• Use access controls and role-based permissions to reduce unnecessary exposure to private data

3. Build and Test Your Incident Response Plan

A documented incident response plan sounds great on paper, but it’s only useful if it actually works in real scenarios. To make sure this is the case, your plan should:

• Define roles and responsibilities for each phase of response (detection, containment, communication, etc.)
• Include clear thresholds for escalating incidents
• Be tested regularly through tabletop exercises and simulations

4. Automate Where Possible

Manual processes slow everything down. Automating key aspects of your response, like risk assessment, breach notifications, and logging, reduces errors and accelerates time to action.

Security compliance automation tools like the Mindsec platform help you perform gap analysis,  elevate risk awareness across your organization, create risk and gap mitigation plans, keep documentation organized in a single place, and accelerate your reaction time during adversities.

5. Create and Maintain an Audit-Ready Environment

Law 25 requires companies to prove due diligence after an incident. That means keeping a detailed incident log, evidence of response actions and timelines, and documentation of all post-incident reviews and remediations.

Speed Matters: How Mindsec Hedges Your Law 25 Compliance With An Incident Response Plan

Being slow to respond to a data breach, leak, or security incident carries several risks for companies without an incident response plan. Namely:

• An increased chance of penal and administrative fines from the CAI and the Court of Quebec. See this article for the full amount.
• Long-term reputational damage to your business.
• Loss of public trust and customer loyalty.
• A decrease in operational productivity and a dive in team morale.

Law 25 compliance automation saves you hours and even days’ worth of reaction time during incidents, turning a potential crisis into a controlled recovery.

Mindsec’s risk, security, and compliance automation platform includes built-in support for Law 25 incident response in the form of:

• Built-in risk scoring, to help you determine reporting thresholds in minutes, not hours.
• One-click, pre-written breach notification templates for CAI and affected individuals.
• A centralized incident register, always up to date and ready for audits.
• Integration with your existing tools (SIEM, ticketing, IAM) to avoid duplicating efforts.
• Automated incident logging and classification, aligned with Law 25’s requirements.

As privacy regulations evolve across Canada and other mandates like GDPR in Europe, organizations need to continuously refine their security systems in anticipation for the future.

Whether you’re responding to a ransomware attack, a rogue employee mishap, or just want to have a cyber security incident response plan, Mindsec helps you stay compliant, in control, and prepared for any scenario.

Sounds helpful? Book a 15-minute demo to see our incident response automation in action and witness how we give companies back their peace of mind 24/7.