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Cyber crisis management

How to navigate cyber crisis and increase business resilience

Published: July 10, 2024 | Updated: December 16, 2024

Read time: 3 minutes

In an era where digital transformation is at the forefront of business operations, cyber threats have escalated in both frequency and sophistication.

Read the latest Market Trends report on cyber crisis management to learn what a cyber crisis is and how a dynamic cybersecurity approach can empower organizations to prepare for, respond to and recover from a cyber crisis.

The growing cyberthreat landscape

Cyber-attacks are on the rise…

  • In 2023, there was a staggering 90% increase in publicly extorted victims of ransomware attacks

…and despite having cyber defense programs, many organizations are concerned about their evolving sophistication and impact

  • About 4 in 10 global businesses think they lack sufficient resilience to handle sophisticated cyberattacks
  • A majority of cybersecurity leaders are not confident in their teams' preparedness for future attacks

From cyber incident to cyber crisis

According to ENISA, cybersecurity incidents can be categorized into three main levels of severity:

Cyber Incident

  • Disruptive but manageable within the scope of an organization’s existing know-how and infrastructure.

Large-scale cyber incident

  • Significant disruption where an organization is unable to take mitigating action on its own or if more than one entity or parties are affected.

Cyber crisis

  • A large-scale cybersecurity incident can escalate into a cyber crisis, depending on the uncertainty, risk or severity of the incident, in addition to its time-sensitivity or transboundary impact. 

The capability to react rapidly to a cyber-attack helps to minimize the possibility of long-term, material impact.

Organizations that develop superior, integrated, and automated cyber crisis response capabilities can rapidly activate:

  • non-routine leadership
  • crisis management
  • coordination of enterprise-wide resources

What is cyber crisis management?

Cyber crisis management is a cybersecurity framework designed to develop these capabilities and prepare organizations to respond to and recover from cyber crises.

The cyber crisis management framework is made up of six key areas:

Effective implementation can:

Ensure rapid response

Prevent cyber incident escalation

Protect critical assets

Enable regulatory compliance

Safeguard reputation and trust

Access the full report to learn more about effective cyber crisis management strategies and uncover best practices to help you improve your security posture and resilience.

1. A transboundary crisis can be understood as crossing geographical, organizational and/or political borders. ↩

Written by

Eda Bolturk, Ph.D.

Director, Product management, Cyber & digital resilience practice, Mastercard

Ricardo Giorgi

 

Managing consultant, Cyber & digital resilience practice, Mastercard

Baris Ercan

Associate managing consultant, Cyber & digital resilience practice, Mastercard

Fernando Leitao

Principal and client services lead, Cyber & digital resilience practice, Mastercard

Ankita Priyam

Managing consultant, Cyber & digital resilience practice, Mastercard