Empowering Your Business Users: ShadowHQ now offers Out-of-Band Communication and access to files for Internal Teams
Organizations must prepare for various scenarios, including those where users across the business outside the response team play critical roles. During a major attack, key business units and leadership teams rely on IT and Security to provide communication options that ensure business continuity. This reliance underscores the importance of enabling secure, out-of-band communication for internal teams while responding to, and recovering from an incident.
Not all Incident response platforms offer robust communications capabilities let alone communications for extended business users. Now, ShadowHQ lets you extend communications and secure file storage access to other users in your organization at a fraction of the cost. Lets face it, during a major attack, the rest of the business will be looking to the Security or IT leaders for secure communications so they can perform their critical tasks.
By extending out of band communications and access to critical files, department heads, operations managers, and leadership teams can streamline decision-making and maintain operational continuity with peace of mind and within the same secure platform the response team is working in. ShadowHQ ensures that business-critical communications remain functional when primary systems are compromised.
IBM’s Annual Cost of a Data Breach report for 2024 report suggests the average cost of an attack is $4.88M usd. With more than 30% of those costs from non-technical factors like loss of revenue, reputational damage, customer retention, liabilities, it is critical every business unit and teams also have the right tools to aid in the recovery.
Seamless collaboration across internal teams during crisis response is mission-critical not only to ensure continuity but to recover quickly. Below, we explore the importance of enabling out-of-band communication for internal business users and how ShadowHQ simplifies implementation.
Why Internal Teams Need Out-of-Band Communication During Crises
Key internal teams—beyond the cybersecurity response group—often play important roles during incidents. Departments such as operations, finance, legal, and public relations need secure communication channels to coordinate their efforts without relying on potentially compromised systems.
How will they join the fight while maintaining privacy, compliance outside of the watchful eyes of threat actors? Fortunately, now you can extend the same ShadowHQ communication tools to your business users to help with their recovery efforts in a secure and private way. Implementing these channels in advance is essential to ensure continuity and a quick recovery.
Which Teams Need Out of Band Communications
- Leadership teams need overarching visibility and secure communication to make timely, informed decisions during a crisis.
- Operations managers require real-time updates and coordination tools to maintain workflow continuity and address disruptions.
- Finance teams may need access to monitor and manage the financial implications of the incident.
- Legal teams require secure channels to ensure compliance and manage legal risks associated with the attack.
- Public relations teams need accurate, timely information to craft effective communication strategies for internal and external audiences.
- Sales teams need the ability to coordinate to manage customer expectations, concerns and ultimately preserve that account.
Each team’s role and requirements will vary, making it crucial to establish flexible access levels tailored to their needs.
Best Practices for Preparing Business Users for Response:
How can you effectively manage Business Users within a crisis framework? Let’s explore how to refine processes to improve collaboration between business users and the response team. A few ways to enhance these processes are:
- Establish dedicated communication channels: Predefine secure, crisis communications strategy for internal teams to ensure real-time updates and collaboration during a crisis. ShadowHQ’s War Rooms and Breakout Rooms ensure these channels remain operational even during system outages.
- Define roles and responsibilities: Clearly outline each team’s role in the incident response plan. Ensure all team members understand their responsibilities and how to use ShadowHQ communication tools effectively.
- Align internal processes: Ensure that all internal teams are aligned with the organization’s crisis response workflows. ShadowHQ enables seamless integration of communication into these processes.
- Leverage technology for resilience: Use ShadowHQ and provide role-based access controls and encryption to protect sensitive information while facilitating collaboration.
- Regularly review and update protocols: Periodically assess and update communication strategies and access levels to align with evolving team roles and organizational needs.
- Perform Tabletop exercises: Run Tabletop exercises at least once a quarter in ShadowHQ and be sure to include extended business users to review downstream tasks in the exercise to ensure maximum readiness.
The Value of Including Internal Business Users in Crisis Communication
Why is it crucial to extend out-of-band communication capabilities to internal business users? Key benefits include:
- Revenue/Reputation Management: Sales and Marketing teams can manage customer accounts, concerns and reputation.
- Enhanced operational continuity: Internal teams can maintain essential functions and minimize disruptions, even during significant incidents.
- Improved decision-making: Leadership and business units can make informed decisions with access to secure, real-time information.
- Faster recovery: Streamlined communication across internal teams accelerates response times and mitigates the impact of the incident.
- Compliance assurance: Secure communication channels help maintain regulatory compliance during containment and recovery efforts.
By empowering internal teams with secure out-of-band communication capabilities, ShadowHQ strengthens your organization’s resilience, ensuring that critical business functions continue seamlessly in the face of adversity.
Partner with ShadowHQ to Support your Business During an Attack
Giving business users access to response systems is critical in the ever-evolving risk landscape. Enabling them to perform their critical tasks to protect your organization .
ShadowHQ is an out-of-band communications platform at heart. Our new business user capabilities simplify crisis response management with straightforward processes to give access to those outside the organization. Any organization can invite and provide strategic updates to users who may not be part of the crisis response team. The end result is better communications and full support for your business continuity planning and execution.
Your incident response efforts will significantly benefit from a scalable, flexible system that supports internal and external team members. Ready to see how ShadowHQ can help? Book a demo today to see our platform in action and start evolving how you respond to critical incidents.
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