Teams isn’t responding. Zoom is unreachable. Emails aren’t getting through.
And that is exactly when a crisis begins.
Cyberattack, network outage, compromised information system or an unavailable cloud service: an incident can quickly disrupt the communication tools an organisation relies on every day.
The problem is then no longer just technical. When teams can no longer reach each other, share sensitive information or make decisions together, communication continuity becomes a business continuity issue.
One question therefore needs to be asked before the crisis:
Where will your team meet if your usual tools stop working?
Several communication tools do not make a backup plan
Microsoft Teams, Zoom, email and collaboration platforms are essential to companies’ day-to-day operations.
But a crisis changes the rules.
During a cyberattack, part of the information system may be isolated, some accounts compromised or access temporarily disabled. Several services may also depend on the same identities, infrastructure or network connections.
Having several tools does not necessarily mean having a genuine backup solution.
The question CIOs and CISOs now need to ask: “Do we have an independent communication environment, ready to use if our usual tools become unavailable?”
Crisis communication must be prepared in advance
During a critical incident, every minute counts.
Without a prepared environment, the first minutes are often spent on operational questions: who should we contact? Which tool should we use? How do we convene the crisis unit? Where do we share documents? How do we bring in an external expert?
Teams then risk multiplying channels: personal phones, text messages, consumer messaging apps, private emails or meetings set up in a hurry.
Information becomes scattered at the very moment it should be centralised, secured and controlled.
A more resilient approach is to prepare the environment before the incident: groups configured, key people identified, access available and procedures known.
The crisis begins. The communication space is already ready.
A truly independent backup channel
A real crisis communication solution must also take the independence of its infrastructure into account.
If the backup environment relies on the same user accounts, the same cloud infrastructure or the same system as the main tools, a common failure can affect both.
Private Discuss provides a communication environment that is separate from traditional collaboration platforms. The solution can notably be deployed on premise, on infrastructure controlled by the organisation, to strengthen control over critical communications.
The goal is to have an alternative environment when traditional tools are no longer available.
Building a digital crisis room with Private Discuss
An organisation should not discover its crisis communication tool on the day it needs it.
Private Discuss makes it possible to prepare, in advance, a private and secure space dedicated to critical communications, which can be activated within minutes when a crisis strikes.
This environment makes it possible to:
- Alert teams quickly to mobilise the people concerned as soon as an incident is detected.
- Communicate in a secure environment with messaging and audio and video calls.
- Centralise sensitive documents in the same space as conversations and decisions.
- Control access to information and to the different communication spaces.
- Temporarily bring in external stakeholders, such as cybersecurity experts, legal counsel, service providers or consultants.
The goal: avoid having to rebuild a parallel communication system in a hurry when the organisation is already managing the crisis.
Business continuity: don’t forget communications
Business continuity strategies naturally focus on backups, critical applications, networks, recovery plans and backup systems.
But behind every procedure, people need to be able to communicate and make decisions.
A perfectly documented crisis procedure quickly loses its effectiveness if the people responsible for carrying it out can no longer reach each other.
Communication continuity must therefore be an integral part of any resilience strategy.
Before the next incident, a few questions can help you assess your level of preparedness:
- Where will our crisis unit meet if Teams or Zoom are no longer accessible?
- Does our backup channel depend on the same infrastructure as our main tools?
- Do key people already know how to connect to it?
- Can we exchange messages, hold calls and share documents in the same environment?
- Can we quickly bring in an external stakeholder?
- Who controls the infrastructure and the data?
If these decisions still have to be made when the crisis begins, the organisation loses precious time.
Prepare your crisis communication before the incident
Private Discuss was designed for organisations operating in sensitive and critical environments.
The platform brings together in a single environment several functions essential to crisis communication: secure messaging, mass alerting, audio and video calls, video conferencing, file sharing, access management and infrastructure control.
The goal is simple: prepare an independent communication environment before you need it.
Find out how Private Discuss can help ensure the continuity of your critical communications.