When your executive team calls for heightened security, following these 10 steps can help reduce risk and instill confidence in your cybersecurity program.
When geopolitical tensions rise or major cyber incidents hit the news, business leaders get nervous. In response, they often call for tightening security across their organizations. For security leaders, especially those who are responsible for multiple technical disciplines, this can raise a key question: what exactly should we be doing right now to reduce our risk?
To answer that question, we’ve put together a list of actions you should take when you find yourself under a heightened security alert:
Review your incident response plan
Your incident response (IR) plan is only as valuable as its last update. In many companies, it's revisited once a year usually around audit season or during a compliance tabletop exercise. But when you're in a heightened alert state, this document becomes your operational playbook. Review it closely. Are the contacts still valid? Do third-party relationships, escalation paths, and communication channels reflect current realities?
Evaluate your monitoring cadence
During standard operations, most security teams rely on their SIEM or MDR providers to alert them to abnormalities. In a heightened posture, that cadence may not be enough. Ask your team to refocus their attention on the logs and systems that truly power the business. Are your critical workloads being actively monitored in near real-time? Would your team detect subtle anomalies like lateral movement, privilege escalation, or data exfiltration attempts if they didn’t trip a predefined rule?
Now is the time to request daily briefings. Or better yet, stand up a temporary dashboard that filters noise and surfaces risk. This doesn't require reinventing your SOC—it just means asking for clarity where it counts most.
Rally your people
No security protocol is complete without your employees. They are your frontline, whether they know it or not. In fact, 60% of breaches still involve a human element.
During a heightened alert, it’s worth taking time to communicate clearly across the organization. A simple all-hands message can go a long way. Share what’s going on. Explain why extra vigilance matters. Reiterate best practices: identifying phishing attempts, using strong passwords, and reporting suspicious activity. Reinforce the importance of badge usage at entry points and discourage tailgating.
Revalidate access controls
Access control tends to degrade over time. Employees change roles, contractors come and go, systems evolve, but permissions often remain static. In a heightened alert, this becomes a dangerous liability. Now is the moment to certify who has access to what.
Focus first on your crown jewels: systems that handle sensitive data, customer information, or intellectual property. Ask system owners to validate user lists. You may uncover dormant accounts, excessive privileges, or outdated credentials. Not only does this exercise tighten your defenses, but it can also prevent lateral movement if attackers breach your perimeter.
Prioritize patch management
Most IT teams have a patching process, but it’s rarely perfect. There’s always a backlog of systems waiting for updates, particularly when third-party apps or user availability introduce friction.
Encourage your team to reassess pending patches with a fresh lens. Prioritize systems with known vulnerabilities, especially those exposed to the internet. Consider referencing the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog to guide your triage.
Patching isn't about perfection; it's about risk reduction. Closing just a few key gaps could make a big difference.
Validate and fortify your backups
On average, companies test their backups every seven months. When was the last time you tested yours? If prevention measures fail, you have to be able to recover. That’s why now is a perfect time to review your backup strategy.
Are your backups running as scheduled? Have you tested restores recently? Do you have redundancy between on-premises and cloud environments? Many organizations rely on backups that haven’t been stress-tested in months or years. Worse yet, some discover too late that their backup files are corrupt, incomplete, or were compromised during the attack.
Check your cyber insurance coverage
Cyber insurance is a critical part of business continuity. Now is a good time to confirm your policy details: coverage limits, breach response support, notification requirements, and contact information. Ensure that someone in your organization other than the CFO knows how to initiate a claim. Some policies require notification within 24 hours of discovery. Having that clarity ahead of time prevents panic in the heat of an incident.
Evaluate remote access
Misconfigured remote access is one of the leading attack vectors bad actors use to gain entry. A security escalation is a good opportunity to audit, and, if needed, temporarily limit remote access to critical systems. Start by identifying unnecessary or legacy access paths, third-party connections, and accounts with overly permissive VPN settings. And of course, verify that MFA is enforced across all remote sessions.
Monitor threat intelligence with greater focus
As tensions flare around the world, cyber threat activity tends to spike, often targeting industries or regions with geopolitical significance. Ask your team to increase their awareness of global events and correlate them with threat intelligence feeds.
Pay close attention to suspicious traffic from high-risk geographies. Threat actors often disguise early-stage attacks in low-volume probes or domain anomalies. Whether you use open-source intelligence or paid platforms, adjusting filters and rulesets now can provide an early warning signal.
Have experts on call
Even if you have an internal security team, having a trusted external advisor on standby can be invaluable. Someone you can call when time is tight, nerves are high, and clarity is critical. A partner with experience responding to incidents can help reduce downtime, contain threats faster, and avoid costly missteps.
Learn more
Cybersecurity readiness is about preparedness, not perfection. These ten actions won’t eliminate risk entirely, but they will put your organization in a far better position to respond if an incident occurs.
For more information on how to enhance your security posture, go to eplus.com/solution/security