The First 48 Hours: What Great CISOs Do Differently During a Security Crisis

The First 48 Hours: What Great CISOs Do Differently During a Security Crisis

A cyber incident doesn’t follow a business calendar—it lands at 2 a.m., interrupts a board call, or derails your carefully scheduled quarterly roadmap. In those first two days—the first 48 hours—great CISOs make the difference between a contained event and a headline-making crisis. Their leadership isn’t defined by technology alone, but by how they orchestrate calm, clarity, and cohesive action across every corner of the enterprise.

Below is a structured walk‑through of that critical period, illustrated with scenarios and anchored in real-world experience.

Hour 0–6: Initial Triage & High-Trust Leadership

1. Activate the Incident Response Team (IRT)
The moment unusual activity is confirmed—whether it’s ransomware encryption, exfiltration, or critical service interruption—call the IRT. Stick to pre-defined notification protocols. No guesswork, no delays.

2. Set the tone with calm, command presence
Your voice is the anchor. Open the first bridge call with tone and tenor. “We’re on this. We are activating response, escalation, and communication layers. Full situation update soon.” In these moments, your calm creates space for focus—not panic.

3. Clarify the scope fast
Don’t wait for perfect data. Begin with what’s known: impacted systems, potential business consequences, early threat indicators. That informs whether you escalate to executive or legal, or isolate systems, or stand up a broader war room.

4. Assign early accountability
Each function—containment, forensics, legal, communications, business lines—needs clear ownership. Who is leading the forensics firm? Who’s validating detected indicators? Who’s drafting the initial internal memo? That structure signals organization and preparedness.

Hours 6–24: Cross-Functional Mobilization & Messaging

1. Formalize incident bridge cadence
Switch from ad‑hoc to rhythm—e.g., cadenced bridge calls every 2 hours with activity logs, actions taken, open questions, risks, and next steps. Rhythm drives momentum and trust.

2. Collaborate with legal and compliance
Engage general counsel, privacy, and compliance early—this is no later than hour 6. They’ll advise on breach notification laws, customer communications, vendor obligations, and internal governance. If you’re subject to GDPR, CCPA, or similar, deadlines may be as tight as 72 hours.

3. Tailor messages to stakeholders
• Executive Team: high-level impact and strategic decisions (“We may need to pause public API, delay go-live…”).
• Board: only if material to operations or compliance reporting.
• Internal Staff: concise, accurate lines (“We’ve identified and contained suspicious activity on X systems. MFA is required once they return.”).
• External: prepare holding statements, law-enforcement notice readiness, customer-focused FAQs.

4. Ensure intact brand positioning
You’re managing not just systems but reputation. Prepare public messaging emphasizing facts, control, and partnership:
“We detected unauthorized access to systems supporting service delivery. We have contained the incident and are working closely with forensic and law enforcement experts to mitigate risk. We will keep our customers informed.”

Hours 24–48: Deep Dive, Strategic Response, and Reputation Management

1. Conduct focused root‑cause investigation
Your forensic partner should work toward a preliminary investigation report: attack vector, scope, systems impacted. Insights here drive remediation: patches, access revocations, threat hunts across environments.

2. Drive business alignment & recovery planning
As systems are restored, coordinate gap—data integrity, service handoff, contingency. Your playbooks must overlay with real-world backups, on-prem/off-prem differences, and application owner validation.

3. Refresh stakeholder communication
By hour 48, internal teams deserve a clear summary: what happened, where we stand, what’s being done, and what’s next. This fosters organizational resilience. Customer messaging should move from “incident response underway” to “initial recovery complete, system availability at 80‑90%, next updates at 72 hours.”

4. Protect brand and market trust
Bring in public affairs or marketing to help alignment. If media are sniffing around, equip spokespeople with tightly scripted messaging. Lean into accountability: “We acted quickly, our partners are helping, and we’re strengthening defenses.”

5. Begin documenting for follow‑up
Incident recorders should capture all bridge calls, decisions, timelines, and communications. You’ll need this for post‑mortem learnings, legal exposure assessment, control effectiveness, and compliance—especially given the multi‑jurisdictional environment.

Closing the 48 Hours: Your Blueprint for Trust

In the first 48 hours, your role isn’t just to stop the bleeding—it’s to shape the response in a way that underwrites trust, preserves reputation, and sets a foundation for improvement. These hours define whether your team feels organized or outmatched, whether your customers feel informed or abandoned, whether your brand is protected or exposed.

By centering calm, cadence, clear roles, and audience-tailored communications, you're doing more than managing an incident—you’re demonstrating leadership that reinforces your organization’s resilience, credibility, and next-level security posture.

Call to Action

Are your playbooks, teams, and leadership rhythms truly incident‑ready? If you'd like to benchmark your first‑48 readiness, schedule a session by reaching out at tysonmartin.com. Let’s ensure your next incident—inevitable or not—becomes a testament to your strength, not a headline.