Crisis response planning: The true business controllable

In cybersecurity, even the most sophisticated defences can fail. Threats evolve, technology shifts, and complexity grows faster than any framework can. That’s why resilience is no longer defined by prevention alone, but by the speed, clarity, and assertiveness of the response when disruption arrives.

Rehearsing the collapse

You can’t script a crisis. But you can rehearse how to think when it happens.

At OneAdvanced, we treat crisis response as a core leadership and management discipline, not a compliance exercise. Our Crisis Management Team (CMT) and role deputies train under live, high-pressure simulations that mirror real-world events, cyber incidents, supplier outages, AI model failures, workforce disruption, and our risk taxonomy.

We call this rehearsing the collapse: practising decision making when systems are degraded, key personnel are unavailable, information is incomplete, and time is compressed. Each exercise strengthens decision velocity, the ability to make clear, values-based decisions when data and certainty are not always available. Resilience isn’t built on perfect information. It’s built on leadership under pressure.

Owning the first hour

The first 60 minutes of a cyber crisis shape the next 60 days. Research from IBM and PwC shows that organisations which detect, decide, and communicate early reduce overall financial impact by more than a third.

That’s why our focus is on speed with structure, a crisis model that enables rapid escalation, defined leadership, and seamless communication. Our CMT and deputies maintain clear invocation routes, primary and secondary communication channels, and a tested bridge process in and out of working hours, that ensures critical decisions are made and shared without delay.

The goal isn’t perfection; it’s precision, knowing what matters most, and moving fast enough to protect it.

From readiness to resilience

A strong crisis response begins long before a breach occurs. It’s about visibility, preparation, and alignment, ensuring that risk, continuity, and communication frameworks work together, not in isolation.

We’ve built an intelligence-led crisis capability that connects Crisis Management, Business Continuity, and Major Incident Management into one coherent framework. This alignment allows us to anticipate disruption, respond decisively, and recover with confidence.

It’s the reason we view crisis management as more than a contingency plan. It’s a strategic enabler of resilience, trust, and sustainable growth, protecting people, assets, and reputation, while preserving business continuity and contractual commitments.

Taking control of risk

Ultimately, a crisis tests more than systems, it tests leadership. Our philosophy is simple: you can’t control every event, but you can control your response to it.

That’s why we continue to strengthen the foundations that make fast, informed decision-making possible. Our Governance, Risk and Compliance solutions, including the AI-powered Risk Assist platform, give leaders real-time visibility into regulatory change, control effectiveness, and emerging threats, helping them act with confidence in the moments that matter most.

In a business environment where disruption is inevitable, how we respond, decisively, transparently, and together, ultimately defines our resilience.