Sensitive communications within executive teams, boards, and other high-level functions are prime targets for adversaries, especially in today’s landscape where AI is increasingly being leveraged to assess and exploit stolen data. These communications—often involving M&A, internal investigations, HR matters, and legal discussions—can have devastating consequences if leaked.

When incidents occur, the impact stretches far beyond just the incident response team. Disruptions affect revenue generation, servicing customers, production, and more. Reliable and secure communication is essential for mitigating these impacts.

The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) Chicago recently hosted a dynamic panel discussion, “Cybersecurity: Interdisciplinary Tips on the New Regulatory Landscape for In-House Counsel,” in partnership with Benesch Law.

The panel, which included ArmorText CEO Navroop Mitter, offered invaluable insights into the evolving cybersecurity regulatory landscape and how in-house counsel can better prepare for potential breaches.

Following an attack, the immediate focus is often on damage control and restoring normalcy. However, there’s a lurking danger in continuing to use your everyday communication tools. These platforms, vital for daily operations, can become liabilities after a breach, providing hackers with a backdoor for surveillance, data theft, and further attacks.

The hard divide between OT and IT is a long-standing tradition in the Energy industry but the lines between OT and IT in Energy are blurring more and more as both contend with a cyber security reality where adversaries find novel ways to impact both sides, and new cyber regulations further reduce tolerance for delays in responding during an incident. As this occurs, OT and IT teams need to re-think about how they communicate during a crisis.

With cyber threats becoming more sophisticated and complex, effective threat intelligence sharing (TIS) is more crucial than ever, and enterprises should invest in tools that are not only leaders in their field but also align with their operational requirements.

The Forrester Wave™: Secure Communications Solutions, Q3 2024 report has recognized ArmorText as a leader, stating that “organizations that require out-of-band communications for incident response, security operations, or threat-intel sharing should consider ArmorText.”

The unfortunate reality is that breaches can lurk undetected for extended periods-sometimes for hundreds of days prior to detection-creating significant vulnerabilities for organizations “Left of Bang” (“bang” being when a breach is finally recognized). During this Left of Bang period adversaries often monitor activities that SecOps teams undertake to prevent and detect security breaches, informing their attacks.

As cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated, it’s clear that no system is entirely foolproof. Even with the best preventive measures in place, the reality is that breaches can and do happen.

If You Can’t Communicate, You Can’t Remediate

As organizations grapple with increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, the ability to respond quickly, securely, and effectively post-breach is essential for coordinating remediation efforts and a return to normal operations.

During an incident, organizations can find themselves questioning how to communicate — are day-to-day communications systems available? Are emails and messengers compromised and being monitored by attackers?

Interestingly, ArmorText was the only solution in the report that Forrester noted offers “out-of-band communications.” We have seen a shift in how “out-of-band communication” is defined since the Q2 2022 Forrester Wave™: Secure Communications Solutions. The industry went through a period where many vendors self-identified “out-of-band communications for IR, SecOps” as one of their top three extended use cases but now ArmorText is the only vendor in the current Wave that was purpose-built for out-of-band communications.