Page 335 - Cyber Defense eMagazine September 2025

Grab coffee with your legal counterpart. Walk through a scenario with comms and HR. Take the time to
understand what your executive team worries about most when it comes to cyber risk. These touchpoints
build trust, and trust is the currency of effective collaboration when the stakes are high.

From Chaos to Coordinated Execution

When trust is lacking, or when teams haven’t practiced working together, even the best-laid plans can
unravel. One company we work with learned this the hard way. After suffering a ransomware attack, they
followed their documented process as closely as possible. However, the outage persisted for days, and
they struggled with coordination, reporting, and decision-making.

Later, when evaluating new approaches, they simulated that same incident using a modern response
framework. The difference was stark. They didn’t just talk through what they would do: they did it. They
assigned real tasks to real people, documented actions, and practiced with the actual tools they’d rely on
in a live event. Their general counsel called it the best exercise they’d ever run, not because it was
smooth, but because it wasn’t. It surfaced real issues they could now fix.

This company learned a very basic lesson: that resilience isn’t built through theory. Resilience comes
from experiences with realistic, scenario-driven practice that tests your limits. A resilient organization is
one with frameworks that are informed by—and can adapt to—the twists and turns of real-life incidents.
A resilient organization is built through a culture where IR is not a once-a-year update to that doc on the
server: it’s an ongoing, evolving capability that spans tools and teams.

Leadership, Not Lone Wolf

To be clear, this doesn’t mean CISOs and security leaders need to have all the answers. One of the most
common failure modes we’ve seen is the leader who feels they must solve everything themselves. That’s
not sustainable, and it’s not a strategic approach. The role of the CISO during an incident isn’t to be a
hero. It’s to be the coordinator, the communicator, and the bridge between technical response and
business decision-making. That means knowing where to turn for expertise – whether it’s internal IR
analysts, outside counsel, or third-party support – and having those relationships in place before the fire
starts.

The unfortunate reality is that most organizations will face a cyber incident at some point. The goal of
eliminating every risk is impossible. Instead, the goal should be to put your organization in a position to
respond more effectively, faster, and with greater confidence. Build guardrails against chaos. That means
frameworks that support real-time coordination, the ability to adapt to dynamic situations, and a modern
approach to IR that reflects how organizations work today.

Cyber Defense eMagazine – September 2025 Edition 335
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