Cybersecurity is no longer a purely technical issue. It has become a matter of leadership and accountability — comparable to financial risk, legal liability, or strategic planning. Yet much of what decision-makers encounter on this topic is either overly theoretical or deliberately alarmist. This article follows a different approach.
As a decision-maker, you do not have time for abstract frameworks, marketing language, or fear-driven narratives. What you need is clarity:
Which cyber risks actually threaten your organization today?
Which assumptions are outdated?
And which decisions can no longer be postponed?
This cybersecurity briefing is written specifically for people with responsibility. It focuses on the point where many security initiatives fail — not because of missing technology, but because of unrealistic expectations, unclear priorities, and a distorted understanding of how modern cyberattacks really unfold.
You will not find panic-driven scenarios here. No exaggerated worst-case stories designed to sell tools or services. Instead, this article offers a sober, pragmatic assessment of today’s threat landscape — one that applies across industries and company sizes.
The goal of this briefing is not to create fear. It is to provide a solid foundation for informed, realistic, and sustainable decisions — decisions that align with the realities of modern cyber threats.
If you want to understand why many organizations remain vulnerable despite firewalls, backups, and security tools — and what truly matters at the leadership level — you are in the right place.
1. The Current Threat Landscape: What You Must Expect
Ransomware Remains the Number One Threat
Ransomware continues to be the most significant and disruptive cyber threat facing companies today. This is not a temporary trend, nor a problem limited to a few high-profile incidents. Over the past years, ransomware has evolved into a highly professionalized, scalable business model — one that is optimized for efficiency, pressure, and profit.
Modern ransomware groups no longer resemble isolated hackers. They operate more like structured enterprises. Many maintain internal support teams that guide victims through the payment process, offer “technical assistance” with decryption, and even negotiate terms. Some groups define service-level expectations, communicate response timelines, and manage reputations within underground ecosystems through reviews and performance rankings.
By 2025, the average ransom demand has reached the high six-figure to low seven-figure range. However, the ransom itself is often only a fraction of the total damage. What is frequently underestimated — and far more damaging — is the operational downtime that follows a successful attack. Even when organizations decide to pay, the average recovery period currently stands at approximately 21 days. During this time, systems remain partially unavailable, processes are disrupted, and normal business operations are severely constrained.
Payment does not equal recovery. Decryption is slow, incomplete, and unreliable. Data integrity is often compromised. Trust in systems is lost long before productivity is restored.
From a leadership perspective, the central insight is this: ransomware is no longer a question of technical failure, but of business continuity and risk exposure. The impact extends far beyond IT departments — affecting revenue, customer trust, legal obligations, contractual penalties, and long-term reputation.
What This Means for You as a Decision-Maker
The uncomfortable reality is that the question is no longer if an organization will be targeted, but when. Attackers do not select victims based on notoriety or public visibility. They select based on opportunity, automation, and likelihood of successful monetization.
Any organization with approximately 50 employees or more represents a viable target. Smaller companies are not exempt — they are often targeted precisely because they serve as access points to larger partners, suppliers, or customers. In these cases, the smaller organization is not the end goal, but the weakest link in a broader attack chain.
Assumptions such as “we are too small,” “we are not interesting,” or “we have nothing worth stealing” no longer reflect how ransomware operations function today. Attacks are largely automated, opportunistic, and indiscriminate. Visibility is not required. Vulnerability is enough.
For leadership, this shifts the responsibility from prevention alone to preparedness and decision-readiness. Understanding the real nature of ransomware — as a business-driven threat rather than a technical anomaly — is the first step toward making informed, defensible decisions when it matters most.
Supply Chain Attacks Are Increasing
Supply chain attacks have become one of the fastest-growing and most challenging threat vectors in modern cybersecurity. Rather than attacking an organization directly, attackers increasingly target trusted third parties — suppliers, service providers, and software vendors — as indirect entry points.
From an attacker’s perspective, this approach is both efficient and scalable. A single successful compromise of a supplier can grant access to dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of downstream organizations. Instead of overcoming the defenses of a well-secured target, attackers exploit weaker security controls at the periphery of the ecosystem.
Common entry points include software updates, managed service providers, cloud platforms, plugins, integrations, and external maintenance access. These components are often deeply embedded in daily operations and implicitly trusted. Updates are installed automatically. External access is whitelisted. Alerts are minimal or ignored because the activity appears legitimate.
This is what makes supply chain attacks particularly dangerous: they do not rely on obvious technical exploits. They abuse trust relationships that organizations depend on to function efficiently.
Once compromised, malicious code can be distributed through routine updates, administrative access can be misused to deploy ransomware across multiple clients, or sensitive data can be exfiltrated without triggering immediate suspicion. Detection is often delayed because the initial activity blends into normal operational noise.
Humans Remain the Weakest Link
Despite significant investments in security technologies, human behavior remains the most frequently exploited entry point in cyber incidents. This is not a failure of individuals, but a structural reality of how modern attacks are designed.
Phishing has evolved far beyond poorly written emails and obvious scams. Today’s social engineering campaigns are carefully crafted, context-aware, and increasingly supported by artificial intelligence. Attackers use AI-generated voices to imitate executives, suppliers, or internal colleagues. Deepfake-style videos and realistic audio messages are now capable of creating a convincing sense of urgency, authority, and familiarity — especially in remote or hybrid work environments.
These attacks succeed because they do not rely on technical vulnerabilities. They exploit human qualities that are essential to effective organizations: helpfulness, responsiveness, trust, and respect for hierarchy. Employees are conditioned to act quickly, resolve issues, and comply with requests from leadership or trusted partners. Social engineering turns these strengths into liabilities.
What makes this threat particularly dangerous is its adaptability. Unlike malware, phishing and impersonation attacks adjust in real time. Attackers observe workflows, communication styles, and organizational structures, then tailor their approach accordingly. The more efficient and collaborative an organization is, the more material attackers can leverage.
From a leadership perspective, this means that no security stack — regardless of cost or sophistication — can fully compensate for human exposure. Email filters, endpoint protection, and AI-based detection tools reduce risk, but they do not eliminate it. A single moment of misplaced trust can bypass multiple layers of technical defense.
2. What’s at Stake: The True Costs of a Security Incident
When companies assess cyber risk, they often focus on the most visible expenses — the ones that appear on invoices and balance sheets shortly after an incident. In reality, these direct costs represent only a small fraction of the overall impact. The true financial, operational, and strategic consequences of a serious security incident unfold over months and sometimes years.
Understanding these layers is essential for leadership. Cyber incidents are not isolated technical failures; they are business crises with long-term implications.
Direct Costs: The Visible Impact
The most immediate costs of a security incident are tangible and relatively easy to quantify. These include ransom payments, should an organization decide to pay, as well as the fees for external forensic specialists brought in to investigate the breach, contain the damage, and document what happened.
Depending on the scope and complexity of the incident, forensic and incident response services typically range from €50,000 to €500,000. In more complex cases — particularly those involving regulated data or large environments — costs can escalate beyond that range.
Recovery efforts add another layer of expense. Systems must be rebuilt, backups verified, infrastructure hardened, and data integrity restored. These activities often require weeks of focused work and external support. Legal counsel is usually involved early to assess liability, contractual obligations, disclosure requirements, and regulatory exposure.
For organizations operating under European data protection regulations, potential fines under the GDPR represent a significant risk. Penalties can reach up to 4% of global annual revenue or €20 million, whichever is higher. Even when maximum fines are not imposed, the legal and administrative burden alone is substantial. These costs are painful — but they are only the beginning.
Indirect Costs: The Hidden and Often Larger Damage
Indirect costs are less visible, harder to calculate, and frequently underestimated. Yet in many cases, they exceed direct costs by a wide margin.
Operational downtime is one of the most immediate indirect impacts. When systems are unavailable, production slows or stops entirely. Every hour of disruption translates into lost output, missed deadlines, and strained customer relationships. For many organizations, downtime costs accumulate far faster than expected, especially in service-driven or just-in-time environments.
Revenue losses extend beyond the downtime itself. Sales pipelines stall, new contracts are delayed, and existing customers may reduce engagement due to uncertainty or loss of confidence. Publicly disclosed security incidents are particularly damaging in this regard. On average, organizations experience customer attrition rates of around 30% following a widely publicized breach.
Reputational damage is even more enduring. Trust, once lost, cannot be restored quickly through marketing or communication efforts. In many industries, it takes years to rebuild credibility — if it can be rebuilt at all. Prospective partners may hesitate. Procurement departments impose stricter requirements. Sales cycles become longer and more expensive.
Insurance premiums often rise sharply after an incident, assuming coverage remains available at all. Some organizations find that future cyber insurance policies include exclusions, higher deductibles, or significantly reduced coverage limits.
Existential Threat: When Survival Is at Risk
For small and medium-sized enterprises, the consequences of a severe cyberattack can be existential. Multiple studies indicate that approximately 60% of SMEs cease operations within six months following a major cyber incident.
This is not a rhetorical exaggeration. It reflects the cumulative effect of downtime, financial strain, customer loss, legal exposure, and leadership fatigue. Many organizations simply lack the financial reserves, operational flexibility, or organizational resilience to absorb such a shock.
In these cases, the attack itself is not always the immediate cause of failure. Instead, it accelerates existing vulnerabilities — thin margins, dependency on key customers, or limited redundancy — until recovery becomes impossible.
What This Means for You as a Decision-Maker
A single successful cyberattack can undo decades of growth, trust-building, and strategic investment. The damage extends far beyond IT systems and security budgets. It affects revenue, reputation, partnerships, and long-term viability.
Cybersecurity, therefore, should not be viewed as technical optimization or incremental risk reduction. It is a core element of business continuity and organizational resilience.
Treating it as an IT issue alone underestimates both the scale of the threat and the level of responsibility required at the leadership level. The decisions you make — or defer — today directly influence whether your organization can withstand tomorrow’s incident.
3. What Works: Realistic Protective Measures
When it comes to cybersecurity, organizations often look for complex solutions to complex problems. In practice, the opposite is true. The majority of successful attacks exploit basic weaknesses — not because advanced defenses are missing, but because fundamentals are neglected.
Numerous analyses show that up to 80% of successful cyberattacks could have been prevented by consistently applying basic security measures. These measures are neither glamorous nor innovative. They are effective because they reduce the most common and most profitable attack paths.
The Foundation: Cyber Hygiene
Cyber hygiene refers to a set of disciplined, repeatable practices that limit exposure and reduce the likelihood of successful compromise. For leadership, this is not about technical detail, but about enforcing consistency.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Multi-factor authentication is one of the highest-impact security measures available today. Enforcing MFA across all critical systems — including email, cloud services, VPNs, and administrative interfaces — drastically reduces the success rate of credential-based attacks.
There should be no exceptions. Not for senior management. Not for IT administrators. Privileged accounts are precisely the ones attackers seek to compromise first. Implementation costs are low, user friction is manageable, and the protective effect is disproportionally high.
Patch Management
Outdated software remains the single most common entry point for attackers. Vulnerabilities are often exploited within days of public disclosure. Without a defined process, organizations fall behind faster than they realize.
A realistic patch management strategy ensures that critical security updates are deployed within 72 hours of release. This requires clear ownership, testing procedures, and escalation paths when updates cannot be applied immediately. Delays are sometimes unavoidable — but unmanaged delays are a risk decision that must be made consciously.
Backup Strategy: The 3-2-1 Rule
Backups are the last line of defense against ransomware and data loss. A robust strategy follows the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your data, stored on two different media types, with one copy kept offline or air-gapped.
Equally important is testing. Backups that are not tested regularly cannot be trusted in a crisis. Quarterly restore tests should be treated as non-negotiable. An untested backup is not a backup — it is an assumption.
Privilege Management
Access rights should always reflect actual business needs. Employees should only have the permissions required to perform their tasks — nothing more.
Administrative privileges are not a status symbol or a convenience feature. They are a liability. Excessive privileges dramatically increase the impact of compromised accounts and accelerate lateral movement during an attack.
The Next Level: Detection and Response
Even with strong preventive controls in place, perfect prevention does not exist. Modern attacks are adaptive, automated, and persistent. The ability to detect incidents early and respond decisively is therefore critical.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
Traditional antivirus solutions are no longer sufficient. They rely on known signatures and fail against novel or fileless attacks.
EDR solutions monitor endpoint behavior and identify suspicious activity, even when no known malware is present. They provide visibility into attack progression and allow rapid containment. Typical costs range from €5 to €15 per endpoint per month — a modest investment compared to the cost of a single incident.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
For medium to large organizations, centralized visibility is essential. SIEM platforms collect and correlate security events across systems, enabling faster detection and coordinated response.
For organizations without in-house security operations, SIEM can be acquired as a managed service. This allows access to professional monitoring and expertise without building a full internal team.
Incident Response Plan
In a security incident, confusion is often more damaging than the attack itself. A written incident response plan defines roles, responsibilities, communication paths, and escalation criteria.
This plan should be reviewed regularly and tested at least once per year through tabletop or simulated exercises. In a real crisis, there is no time for improvisation or internal debates.
People and Organization
Technology alone does not create security. Structure, responsibility, and culture matter just as much.
Security Awareness Training
Effective awareness training is practical, continuous, and realistic. One-off mandatory courses do little to change behavior. Regular training combined with simulated phishing exercises provides measurable insight into real-world risk.
Typical budgets range from €50 to €100 per employee per year — a small investment with high impact when properly executed.
Clear Responsibilities
Cybersecurity cannot be handled “on the side” or informally delegated to IT. Someone must be accountable, empowered, and funded to manage cyber risk.
In larger organizations, this role is typically filled by a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) or Chief Security Officer (CSO). In smaller organizations, responsibility may sit with a designated executive or security lead — but it must be explicit.
Cyber Insurance
Cyber insurance is not a preventive control, but it is an important risk-transfer mechanism. Coverage terms, exclusions, and requirements vary widely.
Strong policies require minimum security standards and may mandate controls such as MFA, backups, and incident response planning. Insurance should be treated as a complement to security — not a substitute for it.
What This Means for You as a Decision-Maker
Effective cybersecurity is not about perfection. It is about reducing risk in a structured, realistic, and defensible way.
Organizations that focus on fundamentals, detection capabilities, and clear responsibility are consistently more resilient than those chasing complex or fashionable solutions. The most effective measures are often the simplest — but only if they are enforced consistently and supported at the leadership level.
Security works when it is treated as an operational discipline, not a technical experiment.
4. What Doesn’t Work: Avoid These Mistakes
Many companies do not fail at cybersecurity because they do nothing. They fail because they rely on outdated assumptions, misplaced confidence, or well-intentioned but ineffective approaches. Understanding what does not work is just as important as knowing which measures are effective.
The following patterns appear consistently across real-world incidents — regardless of industry or company size.
Relying on Perimeter Security Alone
The idea of a clearly defined boundary between a “secure internal network” and a “dangerous external world” no longer reflects reality. Modern organizations operate in highly distributed environments. Employees work remotely, use personal devices, access cloud services, and collaborate with external partners daily.
At the same time, attackers no longer rely solely on breaking in from the outside. In many cases, they gain access through stolen credentials, compromised suppliers, or phishing — long before any traditional perimeter defense raises an alarm.
Once attackers are inside, perimeter-focused defenses offer little protection. Lateral movement, privilege escalation, and data exfiltration often occur unnoticed for extended periods. Assuming that firewalls and network segmentation alone provide meaningful protection creates a false sense of security.
Effective cybersecurity must assume breach and focus on detection, containment, and resilience — not on the illusion of an impenetrable border.
Confusing Compliance with Security
Regulatory compliance is important, but it is frequently misunderstood. Being GDPR-compliant or holding certifications such as ISO 27001 does not automatically mean an organization is secure.
Compliance frameworks define minimum requirements. They describe what should exist on paper, not how effectively controls perform under real attack conditions. Organizations can be fully compliant and still be highly vulnerable to modern threats.
The danger lies in treating audits and certifications as proof of security maturity. This mindset often shifts focus toward documentation rather than effectiveness. Controls are implemented to satisfy checklists, not to stop attacks.
Compliance should be treated as a baseline — a starting point for security, not the finish line. Real resilience comes from continuously testing, validating, and improving controls beyond regulatory minimums.
Letting IT Decide Alone
Cybersecurity is often delegated entirely to IT departments, with leadership stepping in only when budgets or incidents demand attention. This creates a fundamental disconnect.
Decisions about acceptable risk, operational downtime, data exposure, and recovery priorities are not technical questions. They are business questions. Only senior management can decide how much disruption is tolerable, which processes are critical, and where trade-offs must be made.
When IT is forced to make these decisions in isolation, security efforts become misaligned with business priorities. Controls may be either too restrictive — harming productivity — or too weak — exposing the organization to unacceptable risk.
Effective cybersecurity governance requires active involvement from leadership. IT provides expertise and implementation. Management provides direction, priorities, and accountability.
Acting Reactively Instead of Proactively
Many organizations treat cybersecurity as a reactive discipline. Serious investments are often made only after the first major incident — once damage has already occurred.
This approach is comparable to purchasing insurance after a fire has destroyed the building. At that point, options are limited, costs are higher, and decisions are driven by urgency rather than strategy.
Reactive security leads to fragmented solutions, rushed purchases, and unclear responsibilities. It also places organizations permanently on the defensive, always responding to the last incident instead of preparing for the next one.
Proactive cybersecurity does not require perfection. It requires foresight, prioritization, and steady investment before a crisis forces the issue.
Hoping for “Silver Bullets”
The promise of a single technology that solves cybersecurity once and for all is persistent — and misleading. Whether branded as AI-powered, blockchain-based, or “next-generation,” no tool can replace disciplined processes and informed decision-making.
Technology is an enabler, not a solution in itself. Overreliance on any single product or concept inevitably creates blind spots. Attackers adapt faster than marketing claims.
Cybersecurity is a continuous process of assessment, adjustment, and improvement. It is not a one-time project and not a problem that can be outsourced entirely to software.
What This Means for You as a Decision-Maker
Most cybersecurity failures are not caused by a lack of tools. They result from flawed assumptions, unclear ownership, and delayed decisions.
Avoiding these common mistakes requires leadership engagement, realistic expectations, and a willingness to treat cybersecurity as an ongoing business discipline — not a technical afterthought.
What does not work is hoping the problem will solve itself. What works is recognizing where traditional thinking no longer applies and adjusting accordingly.
5. Budget and Resources: What Does Adequate Security Cost?
One of the most common leadership questions around cybersecurity is also one of the most uncomfortable: How much is enough? Unlike other business investments, cybersecurity rarely generates visible revenue. Its value lies in preventing losses, preserving trust, and maintaining operational continuity.
This makes budgeting challenging — but not arbitrary.
Adequate cybersecurity spending is not about perfection. It is about aligning investment with risk, business criticality, and realistic threat exposure.
Guidelines for IT Security Budgets
As a general rule of thumb, organizations should allocate 7–12% of their total IT budget to cybersecurity. This range reflects what is typically required to maintain a defensible security posture across people, processes, and technology.
Industries with elevated risk profiles — such as finance, healthcare, manufacturing, or operators of critical infrastructure — should expect to invest closer to 12–15%. These sectors face higher regulatory exposure, greater operational impact, and more targeted attacks.
For context, many organizations currently spend around 6% of their IT budget on security. This gap helps explain why so many attacks succeed despite significant overall IT investments. The issue is rarely a lack of technology — it is an imbalance between exposure and protection.
Leadership should view these percentages not as fixed rules, but as indicators of whether security spending is proportional to the organization’s risk landscape.
Investment Priorities by Company Size
Security requirements scale with organizational complexity, digital dependency, and attack surface. While the fundamentals remain consistent, priorities and resource allocation differ significantly by company size.
Small Businesses (10–50 employees)
For small organizations, the focus should be on robust fundamentals rather than advanced tooling. Key investments include multi-factor authentication, reliable backups, cloud-based security services, and basic endpoint protection.
External security consulting can provide targeted expertise without the overhead of full-time roles. In this segment, clarity and consistency matter more than sophistication.
Typical annual security costs range from €10,000 to €30,000, depending on industry and digital footprint.
Medium-Sized Enterprises (50–500 employees)
As organizations grow, so does complexity. At this stage, investments typically expand to include endpoint detection and response, structured patch management, centralized logging, and regular vulnerability assessments.
Many medium-sized enterprises benefit from appointing a dedicated IT security officer — often as an external or fractional role — to coordinate strategy, oversee providers, and report to management. Annual penetration testing becomes increasingly important as a validation mechanism.
Typical annual security costs range from €50,000 to €200,000.
Large Enterprises (500+ employees)
Large organizations require mature security governance and continuous monitoring. This often includes a full Security Operations Center (SOC), frequently delivered as a managed service, supported by a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and a specialized internal team.
Advanced threat intelligence, incident response retainers, and regular red team exercises are standard components. These investments reflect the scale of operations and the potential impact of disruption.
Annual security budgets typically start at €500,000 and upward, depending on industry and global footprint.
Outsourcing vs. Insourcing
For most medium-sized organizations, a hybrid model offers the best balance between control, cost, and expertise. Core IT administration and business knowledge remain in-house, while specialized security functions are handled by external experts.
Services such as managed detection and response (MDR), penetration testing, and incident response benefit from dedicated tooling and round-the-clock expertise that is difficult to maintain internally.
Complete outsourcing is possible, but it requires careful contract design, clear service-level agreements, defined responsibilities, and active oversight. Security cannot be “set and forgotten,” regardless of who operates it.
What This Means for You as a Decision-Maker
Cybersecurity budgets should not be viewed as discretionary spending or technical overhead. They are risk management investments tied directly to business continuity and strategic resilience.
Underinvesting in security rarely saves money. It merely defers costs — often until they arrive suddenly, at scale, and under crisis conditions.
Effective leaders frame cybersecurity spending not as an expense to minimize, but as a controlled investment to prevent uncontrolled loss.
6. Legal and Regulatory Requirements
Cybersecurity is not only a technical and operational concern — it is increasingly a legal and regulatory obligation. In recent years, legislators have made it clear that inadequate security measures are no longer considered unfortunate accidents, but governance failures with tangible consequences.
For decision-makers, this shifts cybersecurity firmly into the realm of compliance, accountability, and personal responsibility.
GDPR and Reporting Obligations
Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), organizations are required to report certain data breaches to the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours of becoming aware of the incident.
On paper, 72 hours may appear generous. In practice, it is an extremely narrow window.
Within this timeframe, organizations must determine whether a breach has occurred, assess its scope, identify affected data subjects, evaluate risk, and prepare a legally sound notification. At the same time, technical containment and recovery efforts are already underway.
Without preparation, these parallel demands quickly overwhelm even well-organized teams.
For leadership, the key issue is not speed, but readiness. Roles and responsibilities must be defined in advance. Someone must be responsible for preparing the notification. Someone must have the authority to decide whether reporting is required. Legal counsel and technical experts must be reachable immediately.
In an incident, there is no time to debate ownership or interpretation.
The NIS-2 Directive
The NIS-2 Directive significantly expands the scope of cybersecurity regulation across the European Union. Unlike its predecessor, it affects not only traditional critical infrastructure operators but also a wide range of medium-sized organizations in sectors such as manufacturing, energy, transport, healthcare, digital services, and supply chain–relevant industries.
NIS-2 introduces stricter minimum security requirements, mandatory risk management measures, enhanced reporting obligations, and stronger enforcement mechanisms. Sanctions for non-compliance can include substantial fines, operational restrictions, and — notably — increased personal accountability for management.
One of the most important changes is the explicit responsibility assigned to senior leadership. Executives are expected to actively oversee cybersecurity risk management, approve measures, and ensure adequate resourcing. Delegation without oversight is no longer sufficient.
Organizations that fall under NIS-2 must assume that regulators will expect evidence of structured security governance — not ad hoc reactions.
Personal Liability and Duty of Care
Beyond specific regulations, management has a general duty of care to protect the organization against foreseeable risks. In today’s threat landscape, severe cyber incidents are no longer unforeseeable.
Gross negligence in IT and information security can lead to personal liability for executives and board members. This does not mean that every incident results in liability — but it does mean that leaders must be able to demonstrate that appropriate measures were considered, implemented, and reviewed.
The standard is not perfection. It is reasonableness and diligence.
Leadership is not expected to prevent every attack. It is expected to take cyber risk seriously, allocate resources proportionate to exposure, and make informed decisions based on current realities.
What This Means for You as a Decision-Maker
Documentation is not bureaucracy — it is protection.
Your security strategy, investments, risk assessments, and key decisions should be documented in a structured and traceable way. This includes why certain measures were chosen, why others were deferred, and how responsibilities were assigned.
In the event of an incident, regulators, insurers, and potentially courts will not ask whether you were attacked. They will ask whether you fulfilled your duty of care.
Being able to demonstrate that cybersecurity was treated as a governance issue — not an afterthought — is one of the strongest defenses available to leadership.
7. Decision Matrix: What You Should Do Now
Cybersecurity becomes manageable the moment it is translated into concrete decisions and realistic timelines. The objective is not to do everything at once, but to act in the right order. Clear prioritization reduces uncertainty and prevents paralysis.
The following decision matrix is designed to help leadership move from awareness to action — immediately, pragmatically, and without unnecessary complexity.
In the immediate term, within the current week, the focus should be on basic verification and clarity. Confirm that multi-factor authentication is active for all critical systems, without exceptions. This single step closes one of the most common attack paths. At the same time, review the status of your backups. When was the last successful restore test performed? If this cannot be answered confidently, the reliability of your backup strategy is uncertain.
Equally important is organizational readiness. Ask a simple but revealing question: Who does what in an emergency? If the answer is vague or fragmented, this is a risk in itself. Finally, identify your most critical business processes and understand which IT systems they depend on. This forms the foundation for all further prioritization.
Over the next 30 days, the focus should shift from verification to structured preparation. Commissioning an external security assessment provides an objective view of your current risk exposure. Typical costs range between €5,000 and €15,000, depending on scope and complexity, and the insights gained often prevent far more expensive mistakes.
During this period, establish a regular backup testing routine and plan an emergency drill. These exercises are not about technical perfection, but about coordination, decision-making, and communication under pressure. Reviewing your cyber insurance policy is also essential at this stage. Coverage limits, exclusions, and required security controls should be clearly understood before an incident forces interpretation.
Within the next 90 days, the emphasis should be on implementation and governance. Based on the assessment results, develop a prioritized action plan that focuses on closing the most critical gaps first. This is the time to implement missing foundational measures and to move beyond ad hoc security efforts.
Regular security awareness training should be established as a standard practice rather than a one-time initiative. At the same time, responsibilities and budgets must be clearly defined. Cybersecurity cannot remain an informal task; it requires ownership, authority, and resources.
Looking at the longer term, over the next 12 months, organizations should aim to mature their security posture. This includes implementing monitoring and detection capabilities that enable early identification of incidents, as well as establishing a continuous improvement process that adapts to evolving threats.
Annual penetration tests provide external validation and prevent blind spots from becoming structural weaknesses. Most importantly, security requirements should be integrated into all business processes — from procurement and vendor management to project planning and change management.
What This Means for You as a Decision-Maker
Effective cybersecurity is not driven by urgency alone, but by consistent, deliberate action over time. Each step builds on the previous one. Skipping fundamentals or delaying decisions increases exposure rather than saving resources.
Leadership sets the pace. By turning abstract risk into concrete actions with clear timelines, cybersecurity becomes a manageable part of responsible governance — not an emergency waiting to happen.
8. The Difficult Questions: What You Should Ask Yourself and Your Team
At some point, cybersecurity stops being about tools, budgets, and frameworks — and becomes a matter of asking the right questions. Not the comfortable ones, but the difficult ones that reveal assumptions, blind spots, and untested beliefs.
One of the most fundamental questions is whether your organization could realistically maintain business operations for two weeks without IT support. This is not a hypothetical exercise. For many companies, IT systems are so deeply embedded in daily operations that even short disruptions have immediate consequences. If a two-week outage would severely impact revenue, customer commitments, or regulatory obligations, the next question becomes unavoidable: how can this dependency be reduced, and which processes must be protected first?
Closely related is the issue of visibility. Do you actually know what data your organization holds, where it resides, and who has access to it? In many cases, data has spread across cloud platforms, shared drives, third-party services, and personal devices over time. Without clear asset and data management, security efforts lack a foundation. You cannot protect what you cannot clearly identify.
Another critical question concerns detection. Would you know today if your organization were already compromised? Many attacks do not announce themselves. They remain dormant, observe, and spread quietly. In numerous real-world cases, breaches are discovered months after the initial intrusion — often when damage is already extensive. If your answer relies on hope rather than evidence, this represents a significant risk.
Equally important is scenario-based thinking. What would actually happen if your most critical systems were encrypted tomorrow morning? Who would make decisions? How would communication be handled internally and externally? Which systems would be restored first — and based on what criteria? Walking through this scenario before it happens exposes weaknesses that are invisible during normal operations.
Finally, there is the question of trust. Do you trust your service providers more than you should? Cloud platforms, IT service providers, managed administrators, and external consultants often have extensive access to systems and data. This access is necessary — but it also expands your attack surface. Trust should be supported by clear contracts, defined access rights, monitoring, and exit strategies, not assumptions.
What This Means for You as a Decision-Maker
These questions are uncomfortable because they challenge perceived control. But avoiding them does not reduce risk — it merely delays awareness.
Strong leadership does not mean having all the answers. It means being willing to ask the questions early enough to act on them. Organizations that confront these issues proactively are better prepared, more resilient, and far less likely to be caught off guard when pressure is highest.
Cybersecurity maturity begins not with technology, but with honest reflection — and the courage to act on what that reflection reveals.
Conclusion: Cybersecurity Briefing for Business Decision Makers
Cybersecurity is complex, but not unsolvable. You don’t need to become an expert, but you must ask the right questions and make informed decisions. Perfect security doesn’t exist, but adequate security is achievable for every organization.
The good news: Most attackers seek the path of least resistance. You don’t need to be uncrackable, you just need to be a harder target than your competitors. Basic security measures deflect the majority of attacks.
The bad news: Doing nothing is no longer an option. The question isn’t whether you invest, but whether you invest preventively or reactively limit damage.
Start with the basics, set priorities, and improve continuously. Cybersecurity is a marathon, not a sprint. But the first step must happen today.
Your Next Steps: A cybersecurity incident can quickly overwhelm small and medium-sized businesses — especially in the first hours, when uncertainty is high and decisions carry long-term consequences. To support leaders in exactly this situation, I’ve created the Cybersecurity Incident Response Guide for Small Businesses.
This guide is designed specifically for decision makers. It provides clear, non-technical guidance on what to do — and what to avoid — during the critical early phase of a security incident.
I also recommend you read the following articles
GDPR Made Simple: A Practical Checklist for Small Business Compliance in the UK
How to Build an IT Security Strategy That Actually Works
How SMEs Can Train Employees to Recognize Phishing Attacks
The 5 Biggest AI Scams of 2026 — and How Entrepreneurs Can Stay Safe
Connect with me on LinkedIn
This is what collaboration looks like
Take a look at my cybersecurity email coaching
And for even more valuable tips, sign up for my newsletter
