BUILDING LEADERSHIP DEPTH BEFORE A CYBER INCIDENT
Your cybersecurity program may have a single point of failure that no vulnerability scanner will find: the person everyone calls when something goes wrong.
ISACA's October 2026 State of Cybersecurity findings show that only 8% of surveyed organizations regularly conduct AI-specific incident response exercises.
That is an AI readiness concern, but it also raises a broader leadership question: Are we developing people who can make decisions under pressure, or are we simply documenting procedures?
A response plan can identify an incident commander. It cannot guarantee that someone else is prepared to step in when that leader is unavailable.
For CISO, CIO, and CTO leaders, exercises should build organizational capability, not merely test a playbook.
🔹 Rotate leadership responsibilities. Give qualified deputies opportunities to lead exercises and make operational decisions.
🔹 Practice decision authority. Establish who can isolate production systems, engage outside resources, and authorize critical communications.
🔹 Introduce uncertainty. Test how teams respond when information is incomplete, normal communications fail, or a key decision-maker is unavailable.
🔹 Measure improvement. Identify decision delays, unclear ownership, and coordination gaps, then ensure corrective actions are completed.
Technical expertise remains essential. But strong cybersecurity leadership also requires developing judgment, accountability, communication, and confidence throughout the organization.
The objective is not to make everyone an incident commander.
It is to ensure that organizational effectiveness does not depend on a single individual.
If your primary incident leader were unavailable tomorrow, how confident would you be in the next person?
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