Imagine a serious security alert comes in at 2 a.m.
Your security tools detect suspicious activity and someone is notified. That’s good. The technology has done what it was supposed to do.
But what happens next?
Who decides whether a system should be isolated? Who determines whether leadership needs to be contacted immediately? Who can authorize an action that might temporarily disrupt operations?
And does everyone involved know the answers?
For banks and other financial institutions, having the technology to detect a potential threat is important. But detection is only useful if the organization knows how to turn that information into action.
Detection Is Only the Beginning
A security alert may start as a technical issue, but the decisions that follow can quickly become business decisions.
Imagine that isolating a system could help contain a potential threat—but doing so could also temporarily interrupt an important business function.
The technical team can explain what is happening and recommend a course of action. But who has the authority to accept the operational consequences?
That shouldn’t be figured out at 2 a.m.
Leadership should understand in advance where technical responsibility ends and business decision-making begins.
Define Who Can Make the Call
An incident-response plan shouldn’t just document what technology teams do when something goes wrong.
It should establish decision ownership.
Depending on the situation, that could mean answering questions such as:
- Who receives the initial escalation?
- Who evaluates the potential business impact?
- Who can authorize disruptive containment measures?
- When does executive leadership need to become involved?
- Who coordinates communication with employees and outside partners?
- Which decisions can a technology provider make independently, and which require approval?
Not every incident needs the CEO on the phone in the middle of the night.
That’s exactly why these thresholds should be established ahead of time.
Know Where Your Vendors Fit
For many organizations, incident response involves more than internal employees.
Your technology provider, security vendors, software providers, cyber insurance contacts, and other outside partners may all have a role to play.
Leadership should understand what those roles actually are.
A security provider may monitor an environment around the clock, for example, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has authority to make every business-impacting decision on the organization’s behalf.
Who can be contacted after hours? What actions have already been authorized? When should an issue be escalated internally?
The answers should be clear before they’re needed.
Practice the Business Decisions, Too
Incident-response exercises can also reveal gaps that aren’t technical.
If an important system suddenly became unavailable, which business functions would be affected first? Who would need to know? How long could operations reasonably continue without it?
Walking through scenarios like these gives leadership an opportunity to make decisions when the pressure is low.
It can also expose something that looks simple on paper but becomes much more complicated in practice.
Maybe two people both believe the other owns a decision. Maybe an outdated contact is still part of the escalation process. Maybe a vendor’s responsibilities aren’t as broad as leadership assumed.
Finding those problems during an exercise is much better than finding them during an actual incident.
Don’t Wait for the 2 A.M. Call
Security monitoring matters. So do the tools, people, and processes behind it.
But technology cannot replace decision ownership.
A strong incident-response plan connects technical escalation with business leadership so everyone understands who can decide, who needs to communicate, and when an issue needs to move up the chain.
One useful question for your next leadership or technology meeting is simple:
If a serious security alert arrived tonight, who would actually have the authority to make the call?
If the answer isn’t immediately clear, that’s a good place to start.