NU's March cover feature, "Into the Breach," explores the coverage considerations and claims picture in the realm of cyber liability. Here, IT security maven Mark McCurley offers some of the valuable lessons learned from companies whose electronic data was compromised.

The hits just keep coming. In the last few months alone we've learned of at least five major data breaches at five large companies, from retail to hospitality, arts and crafts to foodservice. The silver lining, if we're pragmatic enough to look for it, is that there are valuable lessons we can take from each of these breaches.

1. Communicate quickly and carefully. Initial word of the Target breach, which potentially compromised more than 100 million credit and debit cards, didn't come from the company. Instead, a highly respected security blogger is the one who broke the news. Target finally released its own public response, but customers were further confused by e-mails that didn't appear to be legitimate (the company used an unfamiliar domain to send the messages, giving the impression it was a phishing e-mail that should be deleted).