Every day, our society becomes more dependent on the Internet and virtual connections – everything from daily financial transactions, records management and retention and business operations to social media and national security. Ever-present cyber threats directly impact how we safeguard important and sensitive information. The growing number of attacks targeted at individuals and organizations affects every aspect of our lives. “In general, organizations recognize that they are very, very vulnerable, and they don’t actually have enough resources to get the job done properly,” says chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, Larry Ponemon, showing an increased need for support.
U.S. federal, state and local government agencies play an important role in preventing and countering these threats and building a network of information assurance, security and resilience. Concurrently, urgent (crisis) and emergent (risk) communications play a crucial role toward ensuring that organizations are ready to rapidly and accurately assess and respond to a spectrum of cyber threats and to partner with other organizations to respond, recover and build resilience during and after times of crisis. Given these realities, Booz Allen Hamilton has developed the Dynamic Communications Model (DCM) based on our 4PMR methodology, which embeds cyber urgent and emergent communications within a broader dynamic defense approach to cyber security. The DCM model tackles urgent and emergent communication from varying perspectives (e.g., individual and organizational) and at varying levels (e.g., social, behavioral and cognitive).