In early 2016, she launched Dealy Mahler Strategies, LLC, and hasn’t looked back. After leaving government service, Loren helped Fortune 500 companies and national nonprofits grow and protect their organizations, as Vice President of Corporate Communications for a PR firm in New York. Prior to that, she ran the communications office for the House Armed Services Committee. Loren has advised top government officials in her roles as Director of Legislative Affairs at the National Security Council and as Communications Director for Office of Legislative Affairs at the Department of Defense. Loren Dealy Mahler is a seasoned strategic leader with high-level government and private sector experience across national security, strategic communications and crisis management.įrom the White House to corporate America, Loren has helped clients leverage effective communications strategies to further business and policy objectives, while mitigating brand impact through effective cyber incident planning and response. Ultimately, everyone needed to know what was going on, and more importantly, what to do about it, but the companies involved took different approaches and the resulting confusion made it harder to quickly implement anyone’s solution. In the case of Meltdown/Spectre, there were multiple audiences ranging from highly technical customers to less savvy end users. The relationships and priorities of each group may also be complex, and in these situations, clarity and consistency are critical. There will be times when you have to communicate about a highly technical issue that may impact multiple audiences in different ways. Complex situations need clear explanations
In the case of Meltdown/Spectre it was clear that everyone’s hesitation to be transparent and a universal aversion to admitting weakness trumped the need for someone to step up and play this role.įor individual companies, a well-rehearsed incident response plan with an authorized manager and pre-assigned roles and responsibilities can go a long way towards keeping folks focused on the greater good. Unfortunately, for multi-player issues, this is far from a perfect solution. This led to a scramble as each company addressed the issue from its own perspective with varying levels of fact and spin.Įither situation can be remedied by a strong leader willing to step in and take control of the planning and response. Information rushed out the door a week early, because a growing number of researchers were beginning to discover – and talk about – the flaw. In the case of Meltdown/Spectre, the original plan was to embargo the disclosure until everyone had time to develop a fix. That means expecting the unexpected – and planning for it. Best laid plans still need backupsĪs a general rule, the more complex the situation, the more carefully you need to plan and execute the disclosure. So, what happened? Here we look at a few of the challenges faced by multi-player disclosures and identify ways you can avoid making the same mistakes in your own company. With the recently disclosed Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, we’ve barely scratched the surface, but what we do already know, is that the fallout from the poorly organized disclosure is likely to exacerbate whatever damage is ultimately done. The fallout from a major security flaw can take months, even years, to fully realize.
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