No Crisis Like a Cyber
When control is your instinct – and the facts won’t play ball
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“In a cyber crisis, systems can be patched, but trust in leadership is harder to repair.”
If control is your comfort zone, a cyber crisis will strain it to its limits.
After all, the early hours of a breach are often defined by uncertainty. Questions emerge faster than answers, and few things test a leadership team more than hearing: “We don’t know yet.”
This case, based on a real incident, illustrates how a CEO’s immediate reaction shaped the direction – and cohesion – of the executive response. Names and some details have been changed, but the core sequence reflects what frequently happens in practice.
The pressure for answers
At 3am, a global cybersecurity consultancy was brought in to support an organisation under attack. A breach had penetrated core systems, operational access was frozen, and sensitive data was being held for ransom.
The consultancy’s lead team arrived on site and was met by the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), who had put the firm on retainer. They were taken straight to the incident response room to begin assessment and containment.
Shortly afterwards, the CEO arrived – visibly under pressure and seeking immediate clarity. He asked when the breach began, how long it would last, and what the potential damage might be. At that stage, none of those questions could be answered, and the honestly honest response was, “We don’t know.”
The cybersecurity team explained that investigations were still underway and that a reliable understanding would take time. The CEO’s frustration escalated, and he instructed the CTO to “get someone who can give me answers.”
But no expert, however senior, could have changed the fundamental reality: during the early phase of a sophisticated cyber incident, key facts are still emerging, and definitive answers are rarely available.
Behavioural risk within the crisis
Executives are used to leading from a position of clarity. Their authority is often rooted in the ability to analyse, decide, and act with confidence.
A cyber breach disrupts that rhythm entirely. Information arrives incomplete and unreliable. Circumstances shift from hour to hour. And senior leaders who are not specialists find themselves dependent on experts whose work they cannot accelerate by authority or force of will.
That reliance often feels uncomfortable, because the loss of control is deeply personal and not simply organisational.
Why cyber incidents are uniquely disruptive
All crises put pressure on leaders, but cyber events introduce a particular strain. Three factors combine to make them especially difficult to navigate:
- Sustained ambiguity. A full understanding of the breach may take many hours, sometimes days, to piece together.
- Reliance on specialists. Executives must lean heavily on technical teams whose pace cannot simply be sped up by senior authority.
- High-stakes exposure. The risks – reputational, legal, commercial – are immediate, public, and highly visible.
Together, these conditions create an environment that resists traditional levers of leadership.
Efforts to force clarity, assert control, or project certainty often backfire, leaving teams more unsettled rather than less.
Preparing leaders for the unknown
It is tempting to believe that robust technical playbooks and incident protocols will be enough. They are essential, of course – but they do not address the full challenge.
Real preparedness requires equipping leaders to function well when certainty is absent, pressure is relentless, and the usual hierarchies do not apply. It depends on understanding not just the technical mechanics of response, but the human dynamics: how individuals react when they feel control slipping, how those reactions ripple through a team, and how decision quality can be preserved when stress runs high.
Famn’s Crisis Leadership Assessment is designed with precisely this in mind. It helps organisations anticipate behavioural pressure points before they surface – mapping likely reactions, exposing hidden vulnerabilities, and strengthening the resilience of both individuals and teams. After all, in a cyber crisis, systems can be patched, but trust in leadership is harder to repair.
“In a cyber crisis, systems can be patched, but trust in leadership is harder to repair.”
If control is your comfort zone, a cyber crisis will strain it to its limits.
After all, the early hours of a breach are often defined by uncertainty. Questions emerge faster than answers, and few things test a leadership team more than hearing: “We don’t know yet.”
This case, based on a real incident, illustrates how a CEO’s immediate reaction shaped the direction – and cohesion – of the executive response. Names and some details have been changed, but the core sequence reflects what frequently happens in practice.
The pressure for answers
At 3am, a global cybersecurity consultancy was brought in to support an organisation under attack. A breach had penetrated core systems, operational access was frozen, and sensitive data was being held for ransom.
The consultancy’s lead team arrived on site and was met by the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), who had put the firm on retainer. They were taken straight to the incident response room to begin assessment and containment.
Shortly afterwards, the CEO arrived – visibly under pressure and seeking immediate clarity. He asked when the breach began, how long it would last, and what the potential damage might be. At that stage, none of those questions could be answered, and the honestly honest response was, “We don’t know.”
The cybersecurity team explained that investigations were still underway and that a reliable understanding would take time. The CEO’s frustration escalated, and he instructed the CTO to “get someone who can give me answers.”
But no expert, however senior, could have changed the fundamental reality: during the early phase of a sophisticated cyber incident, key facts are still emerging, and definitive answers are rarely available.
Behavioural risk within the crisis
Executives are used to leading from a position of clarity. Their authority is often rooted in the ability to analyse, decide, and act with confidence.
A cyber breach disrupts that rhythm entirely. Information arrives incomplete and unreliable. Circumstances shift from hour to hour. And senior leaders who are not specialists find themselves dependent on experts whose work they cannot accelerate by authority or force of will.
That reliance often feels uncomfortable, because the loss of control is deeply personal and not simply organisational.
Why cyber incidents are uniquely disruptive
All crises put pressure on leaders, but cyber events introduce a particular strain. Three factors combine to make them especially difficult to navigate:
- Sustained ambiguity. A full understanding of the breach may take many hours, sometimes days, to piece together.
- Reliance on specialists. Executives must lean heavily on technical teams whose pace cannot simply be sped up by senior authority.
- High-stakes exposure. The risks – reputational, legal, commercial – are immediate, public, and highly visible.
Together, these conditions create an environment that resists traditional levers of leadership.
Efforts to force clarity, assert control, or project certainty often backfire, leaving teams more unsettled rather than less.
Preparing leaders for the unknown
It is tempting to believe that robust technical playbooks and incident protocols will be enough. They are essential, of course – but they do not address the full challenge.
Real preparedness requires equipping leaders to function well when certainty is absent, pressure is relentless, and the usual hierarchies do not apply. It depends on understanding not just the technical mechanics of response, but the human dynamics: how individuals react when they feel control slipping, how those reactions ripple through a team, and how decision quality can be preserved when stress runs high.
Famn’s Crisis Leadership Assessment is designed with precisely this in mind. It helps organisations anticipate behavioural pressure points before they surface – mapping likely reactions, exposing hidden vulnerabilities, and strengthening the resilience of both individuals and teams. After all, in a cyber crisis, systems can be patched, but trust in leadership is harder to repair.
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