Mass Notifications in Cyber Crisis: Why Our New Capability is a Game Changer
Mass notifications are mission-critical in the face of evolving cyber risks, strict compliance requirements, and growing costs of a successful cyber attack.
A survey of CISOs showed that 9 of 10 organizations were at risk of a cyberattack in the following year. Trying to prevent these attacks is the first line of defense, but should an attack successfully breach sensitive systems, mounting an effective response can significantly minimize its impact.
Once an attack is identified, the incident response team must come together and execute incident response plans. However, notifying stakeholders and key personnel of an incident is a critical early step in an effective response.
Legacy methods relied on manual processes and often leveraged communication channels like email that don’t always reach people quickly. This can delay containment and allow the incident to worsen.
We’ve expanded the ShadowHQ platform with new mass notification capabilities. We’ll ensure everyone receives necessary alerts with push notifications or other preferred channels — so you can start containing the cyber crisis.
How leaders are managing cyber crisis communication (and what’s not working)
How do most organizations currently handle mass notifications during a cyber crisis? There are a few strategies that have become established norms despite falling short when compared to modern solutions, such as:
- Manual processes: Many organizations rely on manual methods using primary communication channels, such as calls, texts, or emails. Relying on these processes can delay recovery efforts as the team comes together.
- Email-only alerts: Some businesses use emails to notify response teams of an incident, sent manually or from an automated monitoring system. Waiting for individuals to check their email and hoping the alert is opened introduces unnecessary delays in recovery efforts.
- Siloed communications: It’s common for different departments to use their tools for notifications, resulting in inconsistent communications and delays in beginning response efforts. Additionally, depending on execution, these silos can also create ongoing communication and collaboration challenges.
A few challenges and shortcomings in the existing systems and processes, including:
- Delayed responses caused by inconsistent notifications allow the incident to escalate unmitigated, likely increasing its costs.
- Communication breakdowns may leave necessary personnel or stakeholders out of the loop, affecting decision-making and the overall response effectiveness.
- Mismanagement can occur if critical stakeholders aren’t initially notified and brought in.
Fortunately, modern solutions like ShadowHQ’s secure bunker with mass notifications address these gaps and enable a rapid, unified incident response strategy.
The importance of ShadowHQ’s new mass notification capability
We’ve built our platform to dramatically simplify the mass notification process, solving the gaps involved with the legacy notification process that required manually contacting managers and individuals.
Now, ShadowHQ evolves your notification processes in several beneficial ways, such as:
- Streamline communications from the beginning by leveraging push notifications that bring people right into the app, alongside leveraging other preferred channels.
- Improve response times by quickly bringing response teams into ShadowHQ to evaluate the incident and review existing incident response plans.
- Keep stakeholders informed during a crisis to inform decision-making, communicate with other parties, and manage public responses.
- Significantly improve cyber incident response strategies by ensuring everyone is involved.
- Provide a consistent message and actionable information to everyone, rather than disjointed information when relying on other means.
Without the right platforms in place, it’ll be a challenge to quickly get everyone on the same page and respond to the given incident.
Key use cases: Enhancing cybersecurity with effective communication
ShadowHQ can help prevent costly disruptions by ensuring rapid, clear communication during cyber incidents.
Our industry-agnostic platform can help several sectors collaborate and communicate, starting with effective mass notifications once an incident is detected — let’s explore a few of these use cases.
Financial Services
The stakes in financial services are incredibly high when it comes to cybersecurity. A breach can result in the theft of personal financial data, loss of customer trust, and severe regulatory penalties.
Effective communication during a cyber incident is crucial to mitigate the immediate threat, manage customer relations, and comply with strict regulatory requirements. Mass notification systems in this sector must be robust and able to reach relevant teams in seconds.
These notifications enable security teams to quickly alert risk officers, compliance teams, and even executive leadership, ensuring all parties have the information they need to make decisions.
Healthcare
The healthcare sector generates and stores vast amounts of sensitive patient data and is another prime target for cyberattacks. In a crisis, delays or miscommunication can have life-threatening consequences.
For example, a ransomware attack could block access to critical patient records, paralyzing hospital operations.
Effective communication systems in healthcare must allow for rapid internal coordination. Notifications need to be streamlined to reach medical staff, IT teams, and administrators simultaneously, enabling quick containment of the issue.
Government
Government agencies hold a wealth of confidential information, from citizen data to national security details. Cyberattacks targeting these institutions can disrupt essential services or compromise state secrets.
Effective communication is about responding to the immediate threat and ensuring that inter-agency collaboration occurs seamlessly. Government agencies must have the capacity to share information across departments quickly without losing accuracy or creating confusion.
Notifications need to be sent to the right stakeholders, from IT security teams to high-level decision-makers, enabling a coordinated, top-down response.
Upgrade cyber crisis notifications with ShadowHQ
Communication plays a pivotal role in preventing data loss, reducing downtime, and mitigating risks throughout a cyber attack — and this begins with mass notifications. The purpose of these early notifications is to bring the team together to start evaluating and containing the cyber incident.
Relying on legacy practices and slow communication channels can create significant issues that allow the attack to worsen. Having stakeholders and key personnel involved as soon as possible is critical to containment and recovery.
ShadowHQ offers an industry-leading secure command center that equips teams with everything they need to communicate and collaborate in any crisis. Our new mass notifications feature brings everyone together and on the same page so they can start containing the attack.
Are you ready to use mass notifications and secure, out-of-band communications to mature your incident response strategies? Reach out today to see how our platform can transform your response to cyber crises.
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