16 June 2026
It was an ordinary day, until it wasn’t.
By Geetika Rajpal, Vice President & Regional Head IT, Elgi Equipments Limited
The morning had started with the usual cadence: coffee, emails, a quick glance at dashboards that reassured more than alarmed. Systems were stable. Operations were on track. But then the phone rang. Not an internal alert, not a routine escalation, but a call that carried a different tone. A cyber incident had struck somewhere within the extended ecosystem.
At first, it felt like watching a storm from a distance. Concerning, but not imminent. Yet, within minutes, that illusion faded. Questions began surfacing across corridors and leadership forums: Could this ripple toward us? Are we prepared? What does this mean for the business?
It was no longer about systems and controls; it was about leadership and clarity. Sitting at the intersection of technology and business, the responsibility wasn’t just to respond, it was to translate. Cyber risk needed to be understood not as a technical disruption, but as a potential business disrupting event. Conversations quickly moved from firewalls and endpoints to revenue impact, operational continuity, and stakeholder trust.
There was pressure, subtle at first, but then unmistakable. Leadership wanted answers, while answers were still taking shape. Information came in fragments but each bit was invaluable in guiding the actions we take. Signals were mixed. Some decisions just couldn’t wait. It was show time for all the drills we undertook in Cyber Security.
And that’s when one of the most important lessons quietly unfolded: decision-making in uncertainty is not just about looking at present fact, it is about conviction, clarity and leadership in demanding circumstances to make the difficult calls for securing future from the actions now and here.
There were moments of hesitation. Should proactive protective measures be taken even without direct evidence of exposure? Should communication be immediate or measured? Each choice carried consequences. Acting too early could disrupt operations. Acting too late could magnify risks out of proportions. The thin space between those two extreme was to be treaded lightly and it became the arena where leadership truly had to operate.
But something more pivotal was happening beneath the surface.
People were connecting, across teams, functions, and even beyond organizational lines. Security teams began exchanging insights. Leaders leaned in, not back. Silos, usually invisible but ever-present, started dissolving. It became clear that resilience was never meant to be a solitary construct.
In those hours, frameworks that once felt procedural suddenly became invaluable. Escalation paths, response playbooks, governance structures, they provided direction when instinct alone was not enough. However, no document could fully anticipate the complexity of a real-world event. Adaptability became just as important as preparedness.
There were no grand speeches or dramatic interventions. Instead, it was in the small, persistent actions, clear communication, visible presence, and a willingness to acknowledge uncertainty without amplifying fear. Saying “this is what we know, and this is what we are doing” carried more weight than overpromising certainty to anyone.
And then there was the financial lens.
Every action had a cost implication, downtime, preventive shutdowns, additional controls. Convincing stakeholders required more than technical justification. It required connecting decisions to business value, to risk containment, to long-term resilience. It was not about justifying spend; it was about framing investment in continuity. Trust built over the working engagements and years of collaboration was more of the driving force as no reasoning, logic, or analogy would convince anyone that what was being done was necessary and the most important thing to be done. Each leader had to step up and demonstrate what we all read about leadership qualities.
As the situation gradually stabilized, the urgency faded, but the reflections deepened.
It became evident that resilience is not built in the aftermath of a crisis, it is revealed by it. What worked well had roots in prior discipline; what struggled pointed to assumptions that needed rethinking. Preparedness was not just about tools and controls, but about alignment, speed, and shared understanding.
Perhaps the most enduring takeaway was this: resilience is as much cultural as it is technical. It lives in how teams think, collaborate, and respond under pressure. It is shaped by trust, between functions, between leaders, and across the broader ecosystem.
The incident eventually passed, as all incidents do. Systems normalized. Conversations moved on. But something had shifted.
There was a deeper awareness now, that in a connected world, crises do not knock before entering. And when they arrive, it is not just tools, tech or infrastructure that determines the outcome, but the ability of people to come together, make decisions with limited information, and move forward towards the shared goal with quiet confidence.
Because when the next call comes, and it will, it won’t be the absence of uncertainty that defines the response. It will be the presence of conviction rooted in the culture.
