Crisis Communication for Leaders During a Security Incident

About this course

Communication craft for the person who has to speak during a security incident rather than the person doing the technical work. It starts with the first internal message, which leaders prepare least and which is harder than the external one because it has eight audiences, leaks by default and commits you to a version of events. It covers what you can say honestly while you still know almost nothing, the difference between an update and a commitment and the sentences that quietly promise something, the order in which staff, customers, regulators, partners, press and the board are reached and the failure where one of them learns from another, the internal channel that leaks and how to structure it rather than restrict it, and the language that ages badly, including the precise difference between a claim about your evidence and a claim about the world. Two worked rewrites take a bad internal update and a bad customer notification apart sentence by sentence and rebuild them. Later modules cover working with counsel without producing something nobody can understand, the customer who needs a call and the customer who needs a document, correcting yourself once the facts change, the week after that nobody plans, and the standing preparation that turns all of this from improvisation into execution. This is communication craft, not advice on notification duties, which are a legal question for your counsel.