Ransomware is a business continuity problem first and a technical problem second. You win the first 24 hours by activating an out-of-band command center to manage the incident, prioritizing the processes that make money or keep people safe, and communicating clearly with executives, customers, and regulators. You prepare that outcome now—before the incident.
How to Keep the Business Running When Ransomware Hits
You don’t control when an attacker lands. You do control your response: how fast you coordinate decisions, isolate systems, and keep critical processes moving. Verizon’s 2025 DBIR analyzed more than 22,000 incidents and 12,000+ confirmed breaches, with ransomware and extortion tactics continuing as a top driver of downtime and disruption.
IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach research highlights a second reality: executive and board scrutiny is rising, and response quality has a measurable cost impact. Faster containment, cleaner communications, and practiced playbooks reduce losses.
The throughline: business leaders judge you less for getting hit than for how you run the response and how quickly you get back to work. “The first 24 hours are the most critical… organizations make the most mistakes there.” — Nick Essner, Head of Cyber Solutions, CYGNVS.
Make “Out-of-Band” Your Default During a Cyber Incident
Attackers often target credentials, email, chat, and SSO. If you try to run incident response inside compromised systems, you tip your hand, so your plan must assume primary systems and corporate comms are untrusted.
“You cannot run incident response on compromised systems. Out-of-band communications give you a clean room for decisions, documentation, and disclosure.” — Arvind Parthasarathi, CEO, CYGNVS.
You can stand up that “clean room” in CYGNVS, the out-of-band command center that sits outside your domain and SSO. During an incident, teams coordinate securely while preserving privilege, evidence, and audit trails. Start here: CYGNVS—The Out-of-Band Command Center.
Build Your Ransomware “Go Bag” Before You Need It
Ransomware tests your logistics, not just your logs. Put these elements in place now so you can move in minutes, not hours:
If you rely on ad-hoc tools (Signal, WhatsApp, personal Box/Drive), you’re not truly crisis-ready. Consolidate crisis work into a single, secure command center.
Practice the Way You’ll Fight
Run exercises at night, on weekends, or while people are traveling. Kill corporate chat during drills. Require teams to authenticate and operate inside your out-of-band platform, invite your external partners, and stress-test evidence handling and reporting. The idea is to make it uncomfortable.
Use a tabletop plan that aligns to the Incident Response Lifecycle:
Communicate Like a Commander to Execs, Board, Customers, Regulators
You need fast, accurate briefings for executives and the board, plus regulator-ready documentation. In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires public companies to disclose material cybersecurity incidents on Form 8-K Item 1.05 within four business days of determining materiality. Build your process and evidence trail to support that decision and its timing.
For critical infrastructure, watch CIRCIA: the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act NPRM proposes 72-hour reporting for covered cyber incidents and 24-hour reporting of ransom payments. Final rules are pending; design your workflows and timers now.
Store decisions, timestamps, and data used for materiality. Document what you knew, when you knew it, and why you acted. An out-of-band system helps you prove diligence later and avoid messy discovery risks. For a primer on what out-of-band crisis comms enable, see: Out-of-Band Crisis Communications.
Scope, Impact, and Materiality: Decide Under Uncertainty
In the squall of a ransomware response, you often face incomplete answers. You still need to decide on containment, isolation, and business impact while communicating clear next steps upward. Create a cadence: situation update, decisions taken, blockers, next 4–8 hour objectives.
This rhythm reduces confusion and supports executive decisions about continuity trade-offs (for example, shipping delays vs. financial close). Capture assumptions and who approved each action. If facts change, update the record with what changed and why.
A Short, Real-World Example
A multi-site manufacturer was hit by ransomware on a Thursday night. Identity was suspect, ERP was locked, and comms compromised. The CISO activated the out-of-band command center immediately. Within three hours, legal established privilege, the team isolated OT networks from IT, and executives approved a manual shipping workaround for the top 20 revenue-critical SKUs. Forensics confirmed lateral movement halted and staged restores began for a limited set of Tier-1 apps. The organization kept its Friday shipments, filed an 8-K only after a deliberate materiality assessment, and completed customer notifications through prepared contact-center scripts when email remained unreliable. Post-incident, they formalized their “go bag,” expanded tabletops, and integrated regulator reporting workflows.
That outcome wasn’t lucky. It was prepared.
Practical Checklist You Can Implement This Week
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