Login
iscover
ReporterShare this article on:
Powered by
MOMENTUM
MEDIA
Powered by MOMENTUMMEDIA
Many companies have incident response playbooks; for CISOs, however, the challenge is turning static documents into living strategies that deliver when the breach happens.
Most organisations can proudly point to their incident response (IR) playbooks. They sit neatly on shared drives or in binders, ready to be pulled out when the worst happens – a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency situation, effectively.
Yet when an actual breach occurs, those carefully crafted documents are too often found wanting.
Phone numbers are outdated, escalation paths are unclear or no longer applicable, and teams are uncertain about their roles. In the heat of an active incident, playbooks that were never stress-tested collapse into confusion and give malicious actors more time inside the network.
For CISOs, that failure is costly. Lost time, poor communication, and disjointed responses can turn a manageable incident into a full-blown crisis.
Not child’s play
The real challenge isn’t writing a playbook – it’s making sure it works. That starts with treating it as a living document, not an artefact of past compliance efforts. Threats evolve too quickly for static plans to remain relevant. Ransomware, supply chain attacks, and cloud breaches each demand different responses. A playbook written three years ago for desktop malware won’t cut it today in an age of growing AI threats and nation-state intrusions.
Regular testing is the antidote. Regular tabletop exercises, where executives and technical teams simulate an incident, reveal gaps no document can. They expose unclear responsibilities, bring to light missing contacts, and highlight undiscovered dependencies.
More importantly, they build confidence. When the real thing hits, teams who have rehearsed are faster, calmer, and more coordinated.
Integration across the business is another critical step. Playbooks often focus solely on the IT or security function, ignoring the broader impact of an incident. Yet in reality, a serious breach draws in legal, PR, HR, finance, and the C-suite. Legal needs to manage disclosure obligations. Communications teams need to handle media and customer messaging. Finance must assess potential losses. Even front-of-house staff, like receptionists and call centre operators, need to know what’s happening in case they start fielding calls from concerned clients or curious journalists.
Without these voices in the plan, the response is incomplete.
Metrics also matter. It’s not enough to simply have a playbook – you need to measure readiness. How quickly can your organisation detect an intrusion? How long does it take to contain it? What’s the average recovery time? These metrics turn incident response from theory into performance, giving boards clear insight into the current state of readiness.
CISOs also need to be realistic about resource allocation. A plan that assumes 24/7 staff availability or specialist expertise on demand may look impressive on paper, but it won’t work in practice. Playbooks must reflect the actual capabilities of the organisation, not an idealised version. That might mean leaning on external partners, such as incident response retainers, to plug any gaps revealed by security exercises.
Clear comms matter
Perhaps the most overlooked element of incident response planning is communication. In the fog of an attack, who speaks to whom, in what order, and with what message is crucial. Silence creates confusion, but so does oversharing. Clear communication protocols – internally and externally – reduce panic, protect reputation, and keep regulators onside.
For boards, the key takeaway is this: incident response is not just a technical exercise. It’s a business continuity imperative. A well-tested, well-integrated playbook can mean the difference between a temporary disruption and lasting damage to reputation and trust.
For CISOs, the advice is simple: don’t let your playbooks gather dust. Update them regularly, test them relentlessly, and integrate them across every level of the organisation.
The day you hope never comes will arrive sooner or later – every professional will tell you straight, it’s not a matter of if you get hacked, but a matter of when.
When it does happen, your playbook needs to be more than words on a page – it needs to be the script your business can rely on.
Be the first to hear the latest developments in the cyber industry.
