CISA, the FBI, and international partners issued guidance for service providers on communicating during IT and operational technology outages. The advisory says outages can spread uncertainty and panic even without speculation, and that one organization’s failure can cascade across interconnected systems.
The guidance treats messaging as part of incident control, not a postscript. It calls for timely, accurate, audience-specific updates that align with legal requirements, operational security, law enforcement, and containment, and it warns that telecom may be unreliable, so backup communication methods need to be part of planning.
For critical infrastructure operators, the lasting issue is not only restoration but coordination: if service providers go quiet or speak inconsistently, customers may improvise, duplicate recovery, or make unsafe manual choices while systems are being isolated. Where outages can cross organizational boundaries, the communication plan becomes part of the containment boundary.
Communicating Under Pressure: Best Practices for Service Providers | CISA
This guidance helps service providers plan timely, accurate, audience-specific and ongoing communications during service outages to reduce speculation and panic while aligning with operational security, law enforcement, and containment efforts.