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As Featured in Dynamic Business: What Cyber Incident Response Steps Should Businesses Have Ready?
Kathryn Giudes joined Dynamic Business's Let's Talk series on incident response, with a practical point for any business reviewing its plan: governance written for the annual audit won't help you in the first hour of an incident, and shadow AI is now part of what you're responding to.
ORCA Opti's Founder and Managing Director, Kathryn Giudes, was featured in Dynamic Business's Let's Talk series, where Australian business and security leaders set out what organisations should have ready before an incident, not during one. The piece is framed by the ACSC's latest figures: roughly 84,700 cybercrime reports last year, about one every six minutes, at an average reported cost to business of $80,850. The more telling numbers are the preparedness ones, with around a quarter of Australian organisations holding a response plan they have never tested, and a further quarter with no formal plan at all.
Kat's contribution makes a distinction worth borrowing if you are reviewing your own plan. Governance that exists to satisfy a periodic audit is not the same as governance that operates in real time. If policy is applied automatically at the moment sensitive data is accessed or an AI tool is used, and that activity is recorded as it happens, then the first hour of an incident starts with evidence rather than guesswork. Waiting months for a compliance review to tell you what happened is not a response capability.
She also flags where the exposure has moved. AI is now part of the incident surface, and the sharpest edge of it is the shadow tooling staff are already using without visibility. Her practical starting point is to give people a governed alternative to unmanaged public tools, then build the habit around it: monthly tabletop exercises informed by current threat trends, backups you have actually tested, and continuous monitoring.
"ORCA Opti Assist provides employees with a secure, Australian-hosted AI assistant where governance is built into every interaction, helping organisations reduce shadow AI, protect sensitive information and create the evidence needed to support stronger cyber resilience."
Kathryn Giudes, Founder & Managing Director, ORCA Opti
Read the full feature, including contributions from other Australian leaders, in Dynamic Business: