When a cyber incident hits, the first instinct in many organizations is to look toward the IT department. After all, cybersecurity must be their problem… right?
But recent large-scale cyber incidents have made something very clear: technology alone doesn’t determine whether an organization survives an attack—leadership, communication, and cross-functional coordination do.
Most breaches spiral out of control not because IT failed, but because the organization didn’t know how to work together when it mattered most.
One of the clearest examples came in early 2024, when Change Healthcare, a major healthcare payment processor, was crippled by a ransomware attack.
The incident disrupted prescription processing nationwide, forced hospitals into manual workarounds, delayed insurance claims, and created cascading financial and operational chaos across the entire U.S. healthcare system.
The root cause wasn’t a sophisticated zero-day exploit. The attackers reportedly gained access through a compromised account—and the organization lacked multifactor authentication protections on a critical system. From there, the blast radius expanded rapidly.
What happened next wasn’t just an IT challenge. It required massive coordination across legal, compliance, public relations, finance, executive leadership, regulators, insurers, healthcare providers, and countless partners.
The organization faced billions in financial impact, tremendous public scrutiny, and urgent regulatory reporting requirements—all while trying to restore essential services used by thousands of healthcare organizations nationwide.
Incidents like this prove a simple truth:
Incident response is not an IT function. It is an organizational capability.
Why “IT Handles It” Is a Dangerous Assumption
For years, businesses treated cybersecurity as something the IT department owned entirely.
If a breach happened, IT fixed it. If updates were needed, IT installed them. If something looked suspicious, IT investigated.
But today’s cyber incidents don’t stay neatly contained in technical systems—they spill into the entire business.
A ransomware attack can:
- Freeze billing and account systems
- Shut down customer service portals
- Halt production or shipping
- Interrupt payroll
- Spark legal and compliance obligations
- Trigger media attention and damage public trust
- Require rapid executive decision-making
- Impact partners, vendors, and customers
Meanwhile, IT is focused on the technical tasks:
- Containment
- Forensic investigation
- Isolation of systems
- Restoration
- Securing identities and access
- Working with internal or external incident response specialists
In other words, IT handles the system-level recovery—but everyone else handles the business-level survival.
Treating incident response as an IT-only responsibility leaves dangerous gaps, delays decision-making, and increases the blast radius of any attack.
The Business Impact of Cross-Functional Failures
When cyber incidents escalate, it’s usually because non-technical processes break—not firewalls.
Here’s where organizations fail most often:
1. Operational Paralysis
Departments freeze while waiting for IT instructions, unsure of what work can continue or how to operate manually. Customer service, logistics, facilities, and scheduling all grind to a halt.
2. Financial Disruption
Without system access, teams can’t:
- Process payments
- Send invoices
- Verify payroll
- Manage vendor relationships
Cash flow becomes unpredictable within days.
3. Legal and Compliance Gaps
Many industries must report a breach within hours or days. Without a plan, deadlines get missed—leading to penalties, lawsuits, and additional scrutiny.
4. Communications Breakdown
Conflicting messages reach employees, customers, and media. Rumors spread internally. A single poorly worded email can worsen reputational damage.
5. Executive Decision Delays
Leaders hesitate because they lack clarity on:
- The scope of the incident
- What authority they have
- When to pay for emergency support
- How to balance business continuity with security
In cyber incidents, delayed decisions routinely cost millions.
6. Vendor and Partner Chaos
Partners impacted by the incident demand updates, access changes, or assurances—yet no one owns the communication plan.
All of these failures have nothing to do with firewalls or servers. They are leadership, communication, and coordination problems.
What True Cross-Functional Incident Response Looks Like
A mature incident response program extends far beyond IT.
It requires:
Shared Responsibility
Everyone knows their role—not just IT.
Cyber incidents are treated as enterprise-wide emergencies.
Clear Escalation Paths
Who declares an incident?
Who gets notified?
Who makes which decisions?
Uncertainty disappears when escalation paths are defined.
Communication Protocols
Messaging templates for:
- Employees
- Customers
- Regulators
- Partners
- Media
All prepared in advance—not created under pressure.
Cross-Department Workflows
Each function knows exactly what to do when systems are down.
For example:
HR manages internal announcements and identity verification.
Finance freezes payments and monitors fraud.
Legal handles reporting and evidence preservation.
PR manages public communication.
Operations activates continuity procedures.
Leadership Alignment
Executives understand their responsibilities, risk tolerance, and legal obligations before a crisis—not after it starts.
Why Practice Matters: Cross-Functional Tabletop Exercises
You can’t build muscle memory during a crisis.
If the first time your executive team, legal department, PR group, HR leaders, and finance team all sit together to handle an incident is during a real crisis, you’re already behind.
Cross-functional tabletop exercises expose:
- Communication gaps
- Conflicting assumptions
- Role confusion
- Absent documentation
- Slow decision paths
- Regulatory blind spots
- Vendor dependency risks
BizCom Global’s IRx simulations take this further by putting leaders into realistic, high-pressure scenarios that test their ability to respond collaboratively.
Participants walk away saying:
“We thought we were prepared—then we realized how many blind spots we had.”
“We found decisions we didn’t know who owned.”
“We discovered communication issues we had never considered.”
“This changed the way our leadership thinks about cybersecurity.”
Practicing together builds confidence, speed, and clarity—the three most critical ingredients in effective incident response.
Questions Every Leadership Team Should Ask Today
Use these questions as a readiness test:
If IT reported an incident today, who is the first non-IT person they call?
Do executives know what decisions they must make in the first hour?
Who handles customer communication, and where are the templates stored?
Who manages regulatory reporting deadlines?
Has legal reviewed our notification obligations in the last 12 months?
Do HR, Finance, PR, and Operations know their incident roles?
Have we practiced our response together—as a team—in the last year?
If answering any of these causes hesitation, the organization is not fully prepared.
Conclusion & Call to Action
Cyber incidents don’t impact just servers or networks—they impact people, operations, finances, and reputation.
That’s why incident response cannot live solely within IT. It must be designed, practiced, and executed across the entire organization.
Cross-functional readiness is what separates organizations that recover quickly from those that struggle for months.
BizCom Global helps companies build this readiness.
With IRx simulations for hands-on practice, your team gains the clarity, confidence, and coordination needed to navigate a cyber crisis effectively.
If you want your organization to respond with clarity instead of chaos, now is the time to build a cross-functional incident response program that actually works.
Learn how IRx simulations can strengthen your resilience from the inside out.
