In today’s rapidly shifting cyber-threat landscape, cyber crisis is not a question of if, it’s a question of when. 

Organizations of all sizes and industries are prone to potentially devastating cyber attacks. The need for effective cyber crisis management is paramount.

However, traditional methods often fall short in providing real-time, actionable guidance. This is where state-of-the-art cyber crisis readiness and management AI-powered platforms like Cytactic become invaluable.

Take Vastaamo, for example. In ‘18, this private Finnish psychotherapy service provider suffered two extortion-motivated infostealing attacks, exploiting a breach that had been lurking in its systems for over a year. The press reported that when the CEO first learned of the attack, he shirked his legal obligation to notify patients, regulators, and his own board, and did not disclose it to the company that would acquire Vastaamo two months later.

Four months after the purchase, the hacker contacted the company again, then leaked some of the stolen data, prompting formal investigations, a media exposé, tens of thousands of complaints from patients who were also extorted by the hacker, an emergency government meeting, dismissal of the CEO, and a lawsuit by the parent company.

[Image source: Negotiating with anonymous hackers.jpg]

[Image title&credit: Playing against hackers. Image: Yonatan Wachsmann]

The Vastaamo data breach response, marred by the absence of effective coordination, spiraled into a clusterfuck of mismanagement, operational disarray, and escalating consequences, resulting in it going bankrupt and shutting down, and the disgraced CEO being sentenced to three months’ probation.

That crisis required cooperation and collaboration of many different internal and external team members, holding a variety of expertise, and a thorough knowledge of laws and regulations governing this kind of crisis. Orchestrating it with a smart, collaborative, digital platform could have saved Vastaamo, but in reality, the lack of a structured approach and centralized communication led to a situation that the company could not recover from.

Traditional Methods vs. Digital Platforms

Organizations often invest significant resources in creating response plans based on high-level playbooks that outline steps to take in the event of a cyber incident. While this seems beneficial, playbooks have inherent limitations. They provide broad guidelines rather than specific, actionable steps tailored to the unique aspects of an incident. Additionally, playbooks are static and cannot adapt to the ever-evolving nature of cyber threats, particularly with hackers leveraging generative AI. Once written, playbooks become virtually fixed documents that fail to address the specifics of an unfolding crisis.

[Image source: 15_Response plan divided into domains and teams.png]

[Image title&credit: Cytactic Response plan]

In contrast, Cytatic’s platform utilizes a smart investigation system to quickly evaluate risk and get situational awareness and leverages real-time data-powered insights for risk assessment to predict potential crisis developments. It provides decision support and recommends the most effective responses to both potential and actual threats.

This approach ensures decisions are based on historical data and real-time analysis, orchestrating a more accurate and effective response that evolves alongside the crisis.

Be Proactive – Get Ready 

In pre-crisis readiness, the AI-powered platform can predict potential threats and prioritize them based on their severity and impact, as well as features of the organization, such as size, sector, and geographic footprint. Customizable playbooks and workflows for various crisis types go beyond generic templates, offering deep configurability to align with your organization’s real procedures, obligations, and structures. Continuously learning from past incidents and general cyber intel, the system improves current and future responses, ensuring that the organization is always prepared for cutting edge, yet relevant, threats, allowing it to focus on the most critical issues.

An AI-powered platform like Cytactic is highly adaptable and customizable to the needs of the specific organization, helping it create customized, dynamic scenario-specific playbooks and response plans tailored to the specific threat model and organizational profile, and evolve with the crisis, adapting your plans in real time. This ensures that the responses are relevant and effective. 

However, employees often do not train on playbook based plans, or even read said playbooks, leading to poor implementation during an actual crisis. In the heat of the moment, digitally or physically flipping through pages of a playbook is frustrating and impractical. 

Our smart AI-powered platform incorporates comprehensive training and practice tools, such as crisis simulations tailored to the organization’s threat landscape that immerse teams in hyper-realistic scenarios with the stress and complexity of a real-world cyber incident. Targeted training sessions simulate full end-to-end crisis workflows, helping teams visualize roles, practice coordination, and refine response under realistic conditions – but in a safe, controlled environment. 

By mirroring actual crisis dynamics, organizations can identify gaps, improve readiness, and ensure that they are always up-to-date with the latest best practices and techniques, and that every team member knows their role when a real incident unfolds.