Offering protection through preparedness with Kontex

Kontex’s advisory team lead Mark Sullivan explains how its Cyber Crisis Simulations immerses participants in the complex world of cyber-attacks

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Mark Sullivan, Kontex

In association with Kontex

Tell us about Kontex’s Cyber Crisis Simulations?

Sure, Cyber Crisis Simulations (CCS) are table-top exercises designed to immerse participants in the complex world of cyber-attacks. We work with our clients to design realistic attack scenarios for their organisation and together we run the simulation for their leadership team.

We design these simulations for a non-technical audience. At the end of the day your senior leadership team is unlikely to be dictating the technical elements of incident response, they have a different role with different decisions to make. Our cyber crisis simulations expose them to those decisions so that if/when the day comes that they are face to face with a real-life cyber-attack they know what steps to take.

Kontex offers a wide variety of Cyber Crisis Simulations. Can tell us about its different offerings?

For each cyber crisis simulation, we start from scratch. We work with each client to identify the biggest threats facing their organisation and from this research we start to build out the specific elements of each simulation. We often focus on areas such as:

• External cyber-attack – How to detect and react to an external threat actor knocking at your door.
• Malicious insider – What do you do when the threat is coming from a rogue employee?
• Cyber crisis communications – How to manage your response and reputation in a cyber crisis.
• Supply chain attack – How do you react and recover when key suppliers are under attack?
• Pandemic cyber breach (Natural Disaster) – facing the unique cyber risks posed by an Act of God

Are the participating organisations at risk of the simulation spilling over and affecting their operations?

The CCS is entirely paper based. We take great care to make sure that all materials and artefacts are kept within the four walls of the training room.

What was the idea behind the Cyber Crisis Simulation, and why does Kontex believe now is the right time for organisations to be engaging with an offering like this?

It is hard to find training and testing that specifically caters for senior leadership teams / board members etc. So much of what is out there is either overly broad or too technical to be of use to an organisation’s decision makers.

We find that there are two primary reasons why clients come to us looking for a cyber crisis simulation. The first is to make sure they are ready to respond to a major cyber-attack. The CCS not only tests readiness but it also serves as a great way to identify areas for improvement. The second is to meet regulatory requirements. Since regulations such as DORA / the Central Bank of Ireland’s “Cross Industry Guidance in respect of Information Technology and Cybersecurity Risks” are placing more and more emphasis on leadership to receive specific training on cyber security. We have found that our clients are looking to us to meet the specific needs depending on their regulatory jurisdiction.  

For participants, what is the value in taking part in something immersive like this rather than a more traditional web-based training programme?

Our cyber crisis simulations go beyond the standard web-based learning (WBL) approach. Where WBL goes broad to cover as many people as possible, our cyber crisis simulations are designed per organisation and per audience to ensure the most value is gained from the simulation. Each participant on the day will be faced with situations and decisions that they themselves would need to face in the event of a real cyber crisis in their respective roles.

Kontex provides participants with a feedback report at the end of the exercise. What have some of the main findings been? Are there any areas that have shown themselves to be real blindspots for people?

It is hard to go into too much detail for obvious reasons but something we often see is a general unawareness of defined disaster recover or incident response policies and procedures. Due to the research we need to do into each organisation we often find serious flaws and oversights in a client’s plans and preparations.

Often as a result of a cyber crisis simulation our clients do a full review of their incident response and/or disaster recovery plans. The cyber crisis simulation really shines a light on an organisations ability to respond.

What has feedback from participants been like? 

Positive across the board, it really is amazing how immersed participants get into the simulation and without fail we always get a positive response from our clients.  

The Kontex team has decades of experience in addressing its client’s most pressing security concerns. A full-service cyber security consulting firm, it solves its client’s problems in an efficient and agile manner. If you would like more information on its Cyber Crisis Simulations, you can download its free Datasheet, or alternatively just get it touch.

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