(CLP) Programs

Appleton Greene corporate training programs are all process-driven. They are used as vehicles to implement tangible business processes within clients’ organizations, together with training, support and facilitation during the use of these processes. Corporate training programs are therefore implemented over a sustainable period of time, that is to say, between 1 year (incorporating 12 monthly workshops), and 4 years (incorporating 48 monthly workshops). Your program information guide will specify how long each program takes to complete. Each monthly workshop takes 6 hours to implement and can be undertaken either on the client’s premises, an Appleton Greene serviced office, or online via the internet. This enables clients to implement each part of their business process, before moving onto the next stage of the program and enables employees to plan their study time around their current work commitments. The result is far greater program benefit, over a more sustainable period of time and a significantly improved return on investment.

Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. All (CLP) programs are implemented over a sustainable period of time, usually between 1-4 years, incorporating 12-48 monthly workshops and professional support is consistently provided during this time by qualified learning providers and where appropriate, by Accredited Consultants.

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Executive summary

Destination Resilience

History

Since years we can experience that companies focus on growth and developing new products for markets they researched. The percentage of companies which failed or did not develop parallel to the average market had a lack of resilience towards external impacts or superior internal problems. Those companies which invested in consultancy concentrating on prevention and resilience, to make it short, developed much better and did not suffer so much from these interferences. With the digitalization the fragility of companies raised due to cyber threats and data problems. Resilience is the key purpose the federal defense concentrates on during peace.

Exercises, planning and execution as well as a pre-defined consistent process of communications which enables the huge defense organization to respond quickly when an attack happens. The consultancy and outline process helps companies to set up their resilience program and develop their individual cyber crisis management playbook. Even if it is individual the basics and the guidelines for an efficient cyber resilience management are general and can be taught within a structured process during a certain time invest and the group of managers responsible for the efficient execution of the crisis management. It is very important that this will be approached within a holistic approach from top to middle management and base.

Most companies do have an incident response team and already implemented software to optimize the process. But it can also be recognized that staff fluctuation and the lack of a permanent reconfiguration is missing. That is the reason why it is recommended investing more into the general structure and stable implementation. With this program the selection of success factors from resilience programs can be yours. When a high severity cyber incident strikes an organization, the financial, operational, and reputation impacts can be significant, if not catastrophic. Organizations can reduce these risks and expediate the return to normal operations using a cyber crisis management plan (CCMP).

“Managers see upskilling existing teams and/or individuals as a higher priority than hiring new cybersecurity professionals. This strategic emphasis highlights the skills gap in the market, the benefit of staff knowing the organization’s culture, and the value of driving resilience with better team-level skills and experiences rather than merely adding new people with untested resilience capabilities.” Osterman Research (2023)

Figure 1 Priority of People-Centric Strategies in 2023

Percentage of respondents indicating “high priority” or “essential priority”

Source: Osterman Research (2023)

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Current Position

Currently we can experience that due to crisis all around the world the number of damages doubled within the last three years. It is not a matter of “will you be attacked” by a hacker or hacking organization but “how hard” will you be attacked when f. ex. a ransomware attack successfully strikes your datacenter and is ready to leak important internal company material. This causes not only productivity and turn over because you’re not able to work as usual, but it also costs reputation and your unique position might vanish forever when relevant data gets into the hand of a competitor.

Last but not least you will have to pay money to the federal data protection department and it is clear that all the management will suffer from incredibility and that top management has one leg in jail. You might frequently recognize that in your industry sector companies suffer from, but you cannot estimate how dangerous is your actual situation and you also do not know where to start? But the part which ignores this and has not a stable cyber crisis infrastructure gets hit hard.

Cyber-attacks are like hurricanes. They appear when you do not expect them and when they pass your doors almost nothing will be like the day before. That is why we developed this program and give the opportunity to all companies to reflect their actual lines of communication, internal audits, process and software tools for prevention and cyber crisis management. It will also guide you to a better way of communication during cyber crisis which can also be used for other types of crisis as well. The stakeholder view will be widened and the relevance of external partners and institutions – we embedded at the same time.

Traditional information technology incident response plans often fail to consider the cross-organizational activities that need to be performed to remain resilient. Developing a cyber crisis management plan requires organizations to take a holistic approach to cyber crisis planning. By proactively acting to build a cyber crisis management plan, a broader, carefully considered, integrated and validated plan can be developed to meet an organization’ s unique demands before the crisis strikes.

In 2014, Sony Pictures suffered a devastating and highly publicized cyberattack related to its planned release of the controversial film “The Interview”, which intelligence reports later attributed to a nation-state attacker. As employees were locked out of thousands of company computers and hundreds of servers, their systems’ memory was wiped clean while sensitive personal information and valuable corporate assets were stolen and eventually released online. In time, questions concerning the adequacy of Sony’s cybersecurity program became a prominent topic for cybersecurity experts as well as business leaders, as its IT decisions left the company and its stakeholders vulnerable.

Figure 2 – Sony Picture Case – Estimated loss due to cyber attack

Source: School of International and Public Affairs – Case Consortium,
Columbia University, SIPA-21-0023.1

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Future Outlook

Even if the actual program will be a longtime investment it needs to be implemented carefully into your company. The consultancy which paths the process you can also secure that during the next years the stability of your company can grow. With refresher, auditing and communication training as well as cyber crisis reality training as well. We already have this in mind and this should be clear when you look on the outline plan of the program. At the end you will have a general process, resources and responsibilities and the ability to develop your resilience infrastructure on your own.

Continuity-Management and the necessities to make it happen will be more and more important so that we lay the base for stability and potential future development by the execution of this program. We also want to adapt all general features to your companies characteristics and you will have the possibility to navigate through the program with the velocity and focus you need. The workshop modules are logical and step by step but also agile enough to set individual focus areas. It is estimated that within the next years the annual damage due to cyberattacks will extremely accelerate. The investments in protection need to develop equally and each little investment will reduce much more damage.

Imagine just one day earlier your production can restart or your email server is ready to distribute customer bills, you will be glad. Velocity and acceleration as well as the ability to reduce stress and communication inefficiencies or misunderstandings is key in the game. The development of a training program for your organization and the implantation process as well as the regular execution will guide you in the future and by help of this program.

These twelve workshop modules exactly focus on your own redesigned Cyber Crisis Management Plan (CCMP) you will develop within the last three workshops. The nine plus three patterns will help your company to first deepen relevant aspects of organizations resilience. Going from a wide angle to a deep dive within each module your workshop attendances will get to “know, play and work” with the success factors of cyber resilience.

Figure 3 shows a holistic approach of a Cyber Crisis Management Plan. The adaption and concretization to your company will be one of the major goals during our process. Setting up the roles, structure and responsibilities at latest stage of your company and being fit for the future implementation is a key benefit of the program.

Figure 3 – Example of an efficient organizational implementation
– Holistic approach of Cyber Crisis Management – Project Team Members Overview

Source: Cyber Crisis Management Planning – own graphic based on Jeffrey Don Crump

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