What do you do when you’re facing a cyber crisis? It’s wise to have a crisis card on hand. Because if you don’t know your SLAs with your suppliers, if the documents containing your contacts are encrypted, and you have no way to reach certain team members because your systems are down, you’re already 3-0 behind during an attack.
The Crisis Card
The starting point of a cyber crisis is much more complex than a continuity crisis. Where do you begin? Who do you call together? Should you completely take your networks offline? There’s often a long period of doubt about whether something is really wrong, and that’s valuable time that could have been spent on concrete actions. Your steps in the so-called ‘golden hour’ of a cyber attack can be decisive and significantly limit the damage. But that’s something you can train for. If you have a structure in practicing, you have handles and a plan for that starting point in a cyber crisis. That’s why at CCRC we’ve created a crisis card. This handy tool gives you insight into all essential aspects of a cyber crisis and offers practical tips and steps to deal with it. The crisis card has lined up the agenda items for your crisis team meetings, a checklist for the crisis manager, and concrete tips for managing a crisis. Additionally, there’s space to write down all relevant contact details of suppliers, stakeholders, and members of the crisis team.
Take Action Immediately!
The speed of action is very important. Actions in the so-called ‘golden hour’ can be truly decisive. If you can intervene during that time, you might be able to prevent the spread of ransomware and thus significantly limit the damage. To be able to take action immediately, you need to ensure that you have certain information within reach. Because how do you access the documents containing your contacts and crisis plan if they’re encrypted? Do you have the personal contact details of the team members who will form the crisis team? How do you inform your employees if your communication systems are down?
So download the crisis card, print the document and hang it filled out somewhere in the office. This way, you can be sure that even if all your systems are down and your documents are encrypted, you can take action immediately and have all relevant info at hand!