Today’s digital world is constantly changing, with cyber threats becoming more complex and evolving rapidly. This presents significant challenges for businesses in all sectors, especially those operating within critical infrastructure. These threats don’t just affect the technical aspects; they also impact how an organization operates, its legal responsibilities, and its overall strategy.

In the wake of the Salt Typhoon breach, a sophisticated attack exploiting telecom infrastructure to intercept calls, texts, and metadata, the FBI has recommended that private citizens move their communications to end-to-end encrypted apps like Signal and WhatsApp to safeguard their privacy.

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.