CM-Alliance's IR Services feature on Zscaler Annual Planner for CISOs

Cloud Security major, Zscaler, has released its Annual Planner for CISOs, 2023. The Zscaler CXO Revolutionaries calendar 2023 offers CISOs a monthly challenge to enhance their organisation’s ability to survive and thrive in today’s complex threat landscape.

With monthly challenges in the calendar, April focuses on building Cyber Resilience. It turns the spotlight on Cyber Management Alliance’s expertise in Cyber Incident Response, the Golden Hour, IR Playbooks & Cyber Tabletop Exercises.   

CXO Revolutionaries is a Zscaler-sponsored resource hub that provides actionable, practical, and real-world examples for digital transformation initiatives to the technical C-suite executives.

 For the month of April, the calendar focuses on Building Resilience in the face of cyber-attacks and features Cyber Management Alliance’s expertise in enabling organisations to build Incident Response capabilities.   

On the vision behind releasing this Planner, Christopher Jablonski, Director, CXO Revolutionaries & Community said, “"CISOs have one of the most challenging jobs and can use all the help they can get. Our mission at CXO REvolutionaries is to help these leaders and other technology executives accelerate secure digital transformation. While we publish a variety of thought leadership in pursuit of that objective,  we also get creative and release highly audience-centric resources like this unique annual planner." 

The Annual Planner recommends all CISOs to focus attention on their Incident Response processes and procedures in April, 2023. This also includes updating Cyber Incident Response Playbooks and ensuring they’re relevant, up-to-date and fit-for-purpose. 

“Pay close attention to what you detail in the “Golden Hour,” which Cyber Management Alliance explains as the during-an-incident period that entails knowing who you are going to call, who can authorise critical actions, who handles the press, the third-party that will handle forensics, the members of the crisis management team, and so on. You also need a similar post-incident playbook.”

That’s the critical advice for CISOs from the calendar, based on the work and exhaustive resources continuously being created by Cyber Management Alliance. 

Cyber Management Alliance is also a leader in conducting Cyber Crisis Tabletop Exercises which help organisations evaluate if their IR plans will actually work in a real crisis or not. These exercises also unravel how extensively each of the Critical Response stakeholders understand their own roles and responsibilities during a cybersecurity event. 

The Zscaler Planner corroborates the importance of conducting these Cyber Attack Tabletop Exercises which are important not only from a regulatory perspective, but more so from a business continuity standpoint. 

Here’s how these Tabletop Exercises are discussed in the Planner:

“Tabletop exercises (TTXs) are a great way to assess your plan and can reveal whether your organization can handle a specific class of attack. Practicing critical decisions within the C-suite provides vital intel needed to optimize reactions to potential incidents. It’s better to debate response efforts when not in the middle of an attack.”   

On being featured in the Annual Planner for CISOs, Amar Singh, CEO of Cyber Management Alliance said, “The CISO's job is getting tougher every year given the rise and complexity of cyber attacks. It can often get challenging to prioritise what to do and when. An Annual Planner like this is a great way to help CISOs and their teams focus attention where it matters and keep the eye on the ball.”  

“We, at Cyber Management Alliance, firmly believe that cyber attacks are inevitable and building Incident Response capabilities and overall cyber resilience is the only real protection we have against them. We’re so pleased that Zscaler has featured us and our work in their calendar. We are really passionate about building Cyber Resilience capabilities for organsations across the globe. And we hope this calendar takes our message about the importance of IR capabilities, Playbooks, Tabletop Exercises and more, to an even wider audience.” 

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in London UK, Cyber Management Alliance Ltd. is a world leader in cybersecurity consultancy and training. 

We have enabled over 750 enterprise clients in 38 countries across verticals to strengthen their cyber defences. Cyber Management Alliance is also renowned globally as the creator of the UK’s NCSC-Certified training courses in Cyber Incident Planning & Response and Building and Optimising Incident Response Playbooks.

Cyber Management Alliance is also one of the global leaders in conducting Cyber Crisis Tabletop Exercises for Technical, Operational and Executive audiences. We also conduct specialised Ransomware Tabletop Exercises, apart from holding specifically-designed sessions for the C-suite called Executive Briefing and Awareness Sessions.