Booz Allen’s Angie Messer: Companies Should Exercise Cyber Response Plans Through ‘Wargames’

Angela “Angie” Messer, an executive vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, has told Bloomberg BNA that companies should have cyber response plans in place in the event of a cyber attack.

Messer said in an interview published Monday that firms should exercise such plans on a regular basis through cyber wargames in order to practice their responses to potential network threats and other vulnerabilities.

“This plan should include the roles and responsibilities of the C-suite and should be led by the chief executive officer or chief operating officer, not the chief information officer/chief information security officer since ultimately this is a business operation,” Messer told Bloomberg BNA’s managing editor Donald Aplin.

“Companies should reach broadly within the institution to create a breach response team which is able to make decisions in near real time on issues that impact the business of the organization.”

She also called on Congress to pass the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act in order to facilitate exchanges of cyber threat data and clarify legal concerns on what types of information companies can share with federal government agencies.