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Path 04 · 7 steps · 3 to 4 weeks, an hour or two a week

Governing IR at board level

“I sit on a board with IR exposure for the first time”

The route

Work top to bottom.

Every step opens something already published on this site. Skip what you already know; the order matters more than the completeness.

01
Read Books and frameworks

Cybersecurity for Executives: A Practical Guide

The reading list's pick for non-technical leaders. Read for fluency, not mastery; your job is judgment, not administration.

02
Read Practitioner Runbooks

Ransomware: the first 24 hours

What your team will actually be doing on the worst day. Governance is easier when you can picture the room.

03
Read IRC blog

Planning for the breach

The board-level framing: assume it happens, and govern the preparation rather than the hope.

04
Do Practitioner Runbooks

Commission a tabletop exercise

The single most revealing thing a board can ask for. This Runbook shows what a good one looks like, so you can judge the one you get.

05
Read Document library

Ask to see the incident response plan

The library's Incident Response Plan shows what one should contain. If yours is thinner, that is a finding.

06
Play Interactive

The Breach Budget Game

The security budget trade-off in miniature. Twenty minutes, and the next investment paper reads differently.

07
Join IRC community

The Boardroom Forum

A quarterly breakfast for UK Chairs and NEDs to think about the first hour with peers, before the day. Invitation-led; the page explains how invitations work.

Other routes

Not your stage?