The ongoing MOVEit vulnerability has become one of the most significant cybersecurity issues in recent years. Several hundred companies have reportedly been affected to date, with the potential of thousands more globally and across nearly every sector.

Unfortunately, this situation is only the latest example of a growing cybersecurity trend: attacks on software vendors that can result in millions of individual victims. The SolarWinds attack in 2020 may be the highest-profile example of this type of event, but in recent months, other examples include a business communications software provider and a developer platform.

It’s imperative that leaders consider the reputational implications of an attack stemming not just from internal systems, but from anywhere within their software ecosystems — including vendors.

The FleishmanHillard Cybersecurity practice has supported multiple clients affected by MOVEit and numerous other breaches. In helping these clients effectively protect their reputations while dealing with these matters, we have identified notable trends that others should consider.

What to Consider When Communicating About a Cyberattack

Accept accountability while providing context.

In cases where MOVEit or another compromised software was used by a vendor rather than by the company, that company may have the option to allow the vendor to disclose the breach to the affected individuals directly. Before choosing a path, the company should weigh this choice against their stakeholder’s expectations.

Consider all audiences and be prepared.

Organizations may receive questions from stakeholders regarding risks associated with MOVEit. When deciding when and how to communicate — whatever your level of exposure — have a plan that balances transparency without causing undue alarm.

Take a long view.

Examine your current risk and ask yourself: Is the data I collect essential for conducting my business? Will my stakeholders be surprised by the data I collect? How many third parties receive that information? What are their data privacy standards and practices?

Prepare ahead of time.

Experiencing a data privacy issue is no longer a question of if, but when. These attacks are increasingly more sophisticated and common — a trend that will only continue. While a data security incident by itself does not necessarily represent a reputational crisis, failure to meet your stakeholders’ expectations regarding your level of preparedness and ability to respond in a manner that is transparent and timely could result in long-term reputational damage. To maintain that trust and protect business continuity, it is critical to have a communications plan that is up-to-date and takes these nuances and possibilities into account.

You can reach the FleishmanHillard U.S. Cybersecurity Practice Group at cyber@fleishman.com.

We’re facing a new energy economy. Whether you’re an industry wonk, a communicator keen to understand the macro environment or an energy justice warrior, chances are you have a baseline familiarity with the major global shift in how this critical resource is being supplied and consumed today. But the current volume of discussion on the energy transition can be overwhelming. With a backdrop of tech industry layoffs, factors like evolving climate risk disclosure policies and the race between legacy and startup players to lead the clean tech revolution have us at an inflection point: How does the world think about the future of energy and what is the role of technology in this sea change?

With that, there’s a huge opportunity for communications leaders to show up as true business partners, using the function as a catalyst for change.

Communications to Understand and Prioritize

If you work in the energy field, it’s easy to assume your organization’s stakeholders all understand and agree on how to meet the business opportunity. But if you’re steeped in the work day-to-day — especially if you’re working primarily with like-minded individuals — you may be living in an echo chamber. You require a deep understanding of the full spectrum of your organization’s stakeholders and their current perceptions before your can build your communications strategy:

What are current versus desired perceptions?

What kind of objection handling should you anticipate?

What strong third-party relationships exist and where are new ones needed?

Understanding these elements will help you craft an outcomes-driven communications program while also gaining alignment from your internal business partners on how you’ll prioritize your team’s energy and focus. A win-win. 

Communications to Drive Growth

Once you understand where your audiences sit, you can design a comms strategy to reach and influence them accordingly. Let’s imagine you support communications at a B2B company with a growing clean energy business unit with technology at its core. To drive growth, the company needs to influence CXOs at other organizations for potential collaborations. As part of your stakeholder analysis, you know that some of these C-suite leaders don’t yet know about your company’s new business unit. And, when they’ve partnered with others in the industry, it’s traditionally been with massive legacy players.

In this case, because you’ve done the foundational work to understand your audience’s true current state, your strategy will focus on awareness and trust building, rather than working from an assumption that your target audience already understands what you do and leaning into comms that differentiate. Your content and channel approach will flow from there.

Communications to Recruit

With a global market opportunity for clean energy technologies worth $650 billion by 2030, the energy transition will require the creation of new roles and skill sets. To win in a competitive market, companies will need top tech talent. But talking about stocked fridges and hackathons won’t cut it. Leveraging communications as a recruitment tool starts with understanding what is valuable to your potential candidates and acknowledging there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

Some individuals may crave in-person collaboration time and continued education opportunities while others appreciate the ability to log off around school pickup time and get back online after family dinner. If potential candidates only see messages around catered lunches and quarterly offsites, but your target employee prioritizes flexibility above all else, you’ll fall flat because you’ve failed to articulate what is truly meaningful to them. This is where audience research comes in. Once you know that the early-in-career engineer you’re looking to bring on craves a hybrid work environment and the ability to rapidly accelerate their career, you can lean into messaging and examples that bring this to life.

The clean energy transformation is one that will impact future generations in unimaginable ways. To enable this transition, it’ll be necessary to educate, influence and align a complex set of stakeholders, especially as the democratization of energy expands. By working in true partnership with the business to offer strategic, data-steeped counsel, communicators have an unprecedented opportunity to be a catalyst for one of the most significant shifts of our time. 

SXSW is known as the mega-event for exploring what’s next in tech (with a taco in hand). A highly anticipated interactive conference sandwiched between a film and music festival, the event brings together industry professionals from tech, food, education, entertainment and health for one week of sessions, exhibitions, networking opportunities — and did we say tacos?

Returning fully in person this year with its expected amount of gusto, the buzz coming out of SXSW 2023 was all about AI – be that artificial or augmented intelligence – and community. These themes dripped heavily down into the food track where advancements in soil and water case studies, carbon neutral beef pilot programs and the commercial viability of cell-cultured or cultivated meats were explored alongside the philosophy that humans’ relationship to land, animals and each other is both communal and ancient.

An undercurrent moving through it all continues to be the social environment, impact and emergence from the pandemic whether your part in the food business is a producer, at the supply chain or in food service at any scale. The past few years and recovery from them lingers in every consumer decision, workplace culture and inflated costs. In attending SXSW, it would seem the solution lies in deeper community connections and diversity of thought as well as diet.

From a Media + Platforms point of view, Reddit and social media are places where unique communities are thriving. While brands are harnessing a video-focused social media platform effectively to deliver outcomes that are 1.4X greater for the food and beverage category, Reddit remains a place anchored in realness and the spirit of discussion where brands could both be doing and gleaning more. It starts with finding your audience, listening and observing, moving into interactions and then on to commentary that could become a powerful thought leadership and reputation tool.

While brands are frantically deploying fan strategies for the metaverse, there’s a simultaneous push for live interactions centered around food in the real world (IRL). Science has shown a “feast paradox” — evidence that people who eat with other people do indeed consume more food but have better health outcomes. With retail stores failing every week, many of these empty spaces will become experiential — expect to see culinary collaboration centers rising all around.

And SXSW wouldn’t be complete without taking away a trend that is poised to reshape an industry’s landscape in the near future. For food research, development and innovation the opportunity is in air. By leveraging air to change texture and shape to send certain neuro-signals to the brain, food experiences can be completely transformed and improved while using half the typical water commodity.

In the end, food futurologist Dr. Morgaine Gaye sums it up best: “We think we eat what we eat because we like it, but that’s not the reason. Food is a social communicator that shows us and others who we are.”