Are your comms ready for your next crisis?

I told my daughter I was attending a cyber security event as we got ready for school last week.

“I know about that,” she said. “We learned it in school.” She is eight.

I probed a little: “What exactly have you learned about cyber security?” She told me about bad links and hackers sitting in dark rooms trying to do bad things.

She isn’t half wrong.

Throughout my day at #scotsecure last week, the sessions echoed her learning (though with fewer dark rooms and more sophisticated bad actors).

The AI paradox

Unsurprisingly, AI dominated the conversation alongside the heightened threat landscape.

When it comes to AI, we are all on a learning journey, discovering how to embed it into our defences while acknowledging a sobering reality: cyber attackers are also using it to improve their productivity.

AI isn’t just a tech requirement; it’s a competitive advantage for both sides. Security Operations Centres (SOCs) are using it to free up experts for expert tasks, while other organisations are considering whether it will force them to rip up existing plans, processes and policies to keep pace with the sheer speed and sophistication of AI-driven threats.

From theory to practice

What’s encouraging is the sense of community that exists in the security sector. The industry shares, discusses, and learns. But a day in a conference centre is just theory. For that knowledge to matter, it must translate into practice.

Ask yourself two questions:

1. Does your company have a functional crisis comms plan?

2. When was the last time you actually ran a live scenario to test it?

   
   

Don't wait for the ransomware note

We’ve all seen the devastating impact of a breach. But once your systems are locked, it’s too late to evaluate your response. When operations grind to a halt and panic sets in, a reputation you spent years cultivating can be shattered in hours.

A crisis plan shouldn’t sit in a drawer. It should be a living and breathing document, assessed at least once a year by your key response team. You need to know - not just guess - how your business will react when the worst-case scenario becomes a Tuesday morning reality.

How brass neck can help

When it comes to crises, we can’t wait for them to happen, only to find out the team isn't

ready.

Whether you need to conduct a high-pressure crisis-scenario workshop with key members of the team or build a communications handbook from scratch, we can help you stay ahead of bad actors.

Let’s talk: hello@brassneckhq.com