A critical component of managing a cyber security incident is crisis communication. Swaminathan and Mah (2016) recently published, “What 100,000 Tweets About the Volkswagen Scandal Tell Us About Angry Customers” in  the Harvard Business Review. Their analysis focused on more than 100,000 tweets related to the Volkswagen Scandal. Their conclusions are relevant to CISOs and their cyber-incident management plans.

The Takeaways :

1. Incident management plans need to include an analysis of tweets. As Swaminathan and Mah state, “by analyzing the topics most frequently discussed, managers can better understand what consumers are discussing and apply appropriate recovery strategies.”
2. CISOs need to collaborate with their partners in Public Relations in managing the communication with customers..
3. Understand that tweets change in terms of volume, valence and topics over the course of the incident. The figure below illustrates the three major changes from Swaminathan and Mah