Cyber Crisismanagement

Good crisismanagement is essential for companies and organisations to limit damage and bounce back as quick as possible after incidents. However, crises are becoming increasingly complex. For example, the COVID-19 crisis brought unprecedented challenges, which forced parties hardened in the profession of crisismanagement to improvise. Another development that is making crises increasingly complex is the cyber dimension that is now ubiquitous. Much is being done to increase the resilience of organisations with regards to cybercrises, but what if a disruptive attack or disruption does still occur?

Expert Round Table 

This COVID-19 crisis shows that there are opportunities in the field of (cyber) crisismanagement to innovate and improve. In 2020, HSD Office organised a first Expert Round Table on Crisismanagement. The goal of this session was to exchange best practices, discuss innovation opportunities, and explore new collaborations between HSD-partners on the topics of information management & crisis communication, awareness & actionperspective, and dissemination.

A second Expert Round Table session was organised on the topic of evaluation of cybercrises and -crisis simulations. The experts agreed that when it comes to scientific evaluation of crises and exercises, there are huge opportunities that are being insufficiently utilised: Organisations participate in crisis exercises to learn for themselves, however, there is still very little linkage with researchers to see what is happening from an independent angle. The goal of this session and follow up sessions is to look into research collaboration and eventually public-private collaboration.

These expert sessions underline the current interest of the HSD network and other parties in the topic of (cyber)crisismanagement, as a topic that is characterised by constant changes, urgency, and the potential for further development.

Next steps

In 2021, HSD will continue to stimulate innovation and collaboration on this theme. For example through organising more expert sessions to bring together interested parties and look at collaboration possibilities on topics like the evaluation of cybercrises and -simulations.

Photo: Istock.com/Denis_prof