In the aftermath of 2024’s high-profile cybersecurity incidents, including NHS, CrowdStrike, 23andMe, Transport for London, and Cencora, CISOs are reassessing their organisation’s readiness to manage a potential “chaos” of a full-scale cyber crisis, according to Hack The Box.
Many CISOs across the UK and US are concerned about their organization’s ability to handle a cyber crisis. This is owing to several reasons – the rising volume of cyber incidents (31%), lack of incident response planning (20%), and a lack of realistic, stress-tested crisis simulations (19%). This drives CISOs to reallocate budgets towards crisis preparedness, as they seek to maintain security posture.
“Preparedness is the foundation of resilience, and crisis simulations play a crucial role in testing an organization’s security and workforce performance when it’s most critical. Organizations are right to prioritize crisis simulation and must ensure that these are implemented correctly. There is a need for these exercises to be increasingly realistic and engaging, to equip both technical and non-technical teams of all levels with the confidence needed to decisively defend against evolving threats,” said Haris Pylarinos, CEO at Hack The Box.
“The next evolution of crisis simulation is coupling AI with expert knowledge to deliver highly realistic and tailored scenarios that challenge senior management and front-line professionals. These will unite previously disparate business units as one and allow real-world performance to be benchmarked in a controlled environment,” added Pylarinos.
Crisis simulation budgets on the rise
74% of CISOs reported their organizations are increasing annual budgets for crisis simulation exercises in 2025, motivated by last year’s major incidents.
73% identified practical crisis simulations and incident response exercises involving both technical and non-technical teams – as their top business priority for 2025.
77% stated they would allocate greater budgets for cyber crisis simulations if the exercises were more realistic and actionable.
The findings highlight a growing recognition among CISOs of the importance of realistic, hands-on crisis simulations to build visibility and ensure their organisations can respond effectively during a crisis. In fact, as much as 16% of 2025 security budgets are being reallocated to simulation exercises following last year’s incidents.
“With the expansion of artificial intelligence, the escalating cyber arms race is entering a new and more unstable phase. AI can act as both a weapon and a shield; it can enhance threats even as it helps to defeat them. The investment in crisis simulation exercises reflects a growing awareness that future cyber conflicts will transcend current threat models while requiring accelerated responses that outpace human reaction times,” said Lucas Kello, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford.
“Cyber preparedness is now a matter of national and economic security. 2025 will be a critical year for setting new standards in how nations and industries both utilise and protect against AI,” concluded Kello.
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