A trading desk can't execute. A payments flow stutters. A customer portal goes dark. A regulator clock starts ticking. Your CEO wants a crisp briefing. Your board wants confidence. Your comms team wants "the message." Your security team wants time.

And Finance sits right in the middle — because the question is rarely "did we get hacked?" but rather:

What is the business impact, what do we say, and what do we decide — right now?

Here's my contrarian view after years in cybersecurity and governance: crisis communications is a business design problem. Not a "security program." Not a comms playbook you dust off once a year. It's an operating model you design so that truth, speed, and trust can travel together when the sea turns rough.

Outcome: what "good" looks like in the first 4 hours

In well-run incidents, I see the same outcome pattern:

  1. A single source of truth forms quickly (timeline, impact, decisions, evidence).
  2. A clear decision spine exists (who decides what, with which inputs, in which timeframe).
  3. External messages don't outrun internal facts — and internal facts don't get trapped in a technical bunker.
  4. The board gets a predictable pack: "what happened, so what, now what, and what we need from you."

When that design is in place, crisis communications stops being theatre. It becomes governance in motion.

Constraints: why Finance leaders feel the squeeze

If you lead Finance (CFO, CRO, COO Finance, Head of Risk), you're facing constraints that are structural — not personal:

1) The clock is not negotiable. In EU financial supervision, incident reporting timelines are explicit. Under DORA, supervisors expect staged reporting with tight windows; draft/technical standards and regulator guidance commonly reference initial notification very quickly after classification, with follow-up reporting thereafter. (eba.europa.eu)

2) Information quality is uneven at the worst possible time. Early data comes from logs, partial outages, vendor tickets, and human memory. The first story that forms often wins the room — even if it's wrong.

3) Most orgs are built for "run the business," not "explain the business under stress." Teams are optimized for delivery, not for rapid, defensible narrative: impact, scope, customer harm, financial exposure, regulatory posture.

4) Comms and Security often operate on different maps. Security speaks in indicators, kill chains, and containment. Finance needs operational and financial impact, customer obligations, disclosure decisions, and board confidence.

So yes — this is not just a "security" problem. It's a design problem.

Microsoft's own end-to-end security adoption thinking captures the same truth in a different way: resilience only works when it's designed across people, process, and technology — continuously, not as a one-off.

The 3 design moves that make crisis communications resilient

1) Build a Decision Spine (before you need it)

In a storm, you don't hold a meeting to decide who's steering.

Your crisis communications decision spine should answer — without debate:

  • Who declares "significant/major" and who confirms?
  • Who owns the first external statement (and who can block it)?
  • What requires board notification vs CEO-only?
  • Which thresholds trigger regulator/customer comms?

Practical trick: design it like a ship's chain of command — simple, visible, rehearsed.

Deliverable: one-page "Decision Spine" with:

  • Roles (Incident Commander, Finance lead, Legal, Comms, Risk, IT Ops, Vendor Manager)
  • Decision categories (classification, notification, disclosure, customer comms, market comms)
  • Timeboxes (T+30m, T+60m, T+2h, T+4h)

When Finance helps design this spine, two things happen:

  • messaging becomes grounded in business reality
  • the org stops improvising governance mid-incident

2) Create an Evidence-to-Message Pipeline (so truth moves fast)

Most crisis comms failures aren't lies. They're unreliable pipelines.

The "message" is only as good as the evidence feeding it:

  • what is affected (services, customers, geographies)
  • what is the likely business impact (availability, integrity, confidentiality)
  • what is known vs unknown (and what we're doing to learn)
  • what has already been decided (containment steps, vendor escalations, continuity actions)

Design move: treat comms as an output of a structured incident packet — updated on a cadence.

If you've ever done a family fire drill with children, you'll know: the goal isn't perfect behavior — it's predictable behavior. Under pressure, predictability is mercy.

Deliverable: a living "Incident Packet" that drives all briefings:

  • Timeline (T0 awareness + updates)
  • Impact snapshot (operational + customer + € exposure ranges)
  • Control of narrative ("what we can say confidently")
  • Decision log (what was decided, by whom, when)
  • Regulatory map (who needs what, by when)

This is where Finance is uniquely strong: turning messy reality into decision-grade clarity.

3) Design the Board-Pack as a product (not an email)

Here's the uncomfortable truth: in many incidents, the board gets either too much technical noise or too little substance.

The fix is to productize the board pack as a standard artifact.

A resilient board pack doesn't aim to impress. It aims to enable governance.

My board-pack structure (example):

  1. Executive summary (10 lines): what happened, current status, key risks
  2. Operational impact: affected services, duration, customer impact, continuity measures
  3. Financial risk snapshot: plausible loss ranges, liquidity/operational exposure, key assumptions
  4. Regulatory posture: notification status, upcoming deadlines, evidence readiness
  5. Reputation & stakeholder map: customers, partners, market messaging plan
  6. Decisions needed from the board: 1–3 crisp asks
  7. Next 72 hours plan: objectives, owners, success criteria

This structure also aligns well with the staged reporting mentality regulators expect (initial → intermediate → final).

Next steps: a 7-day "Comms-by-Design" sprint for Finance leaders

If you want to move from improvised comms to designed resilience, do this:

Day 1–2: Map the Decision Spine

  • Confirm owners, alternates, timeboxes, thresholds.

Day 3–4: Build the Incident Packet template

  • One shared location, versioning rules, cadence.

Day 5: Draft the board pack

  • Standard structure, short language, decision-focused.

Day 6: Run a 90-minute drill

  • Start with a messy scenario; measure speed to first board-pack.

Day 7: Debrief + fix the pipeline

  • Improve roles, evidence capture, handoffs.

This is how you reduce crisis communications risk — not by adding another policy, but by designing how decisions and truth move through your organization.

If this resonates: clap and I'll share the board-pack structure I use (template + guidance notes). If you want it faster, comment "BOARD-PACK" and I'll send the outline.