When Colonial Pipeline’s COO received the emergency call at 5:47 AM on May 7, 2021, informing him that ransomware had encrypted critical systems, his technical knowledge of cybersecurity proved irrelevant. What mattered was operational decision-making under extreme pressure: Should they pay the $4.4 million ransom? How quickly could manual operations restore fuel flow? Which customers received priority during rationing? The six-day shutdown that followed costing an estimated $90 million and causing fuel shortages across the Eastern United States demonstrated that cybersecurity is fundamentally an operational challenge, not merely a technical one. Today’s COOs can no longer delegate cybersecurity entirely to CISOs and IT departments. They must understand operational cyber risks, maintain continuity plans for digital disruptions, secure supply chains against third-party vulnerabilities, and lead organizational responses when breaches inevitably occur. Cybersecurity competence has become core COO responsibility, as essential as supply chain management or quality control.
The COO’s Cybersecurity Mandate: Beyond IT’s Domain
COOs face distinct cybersecurity responsibilities that differ fundamentally from CISOs’ technical security focus. While CISOs implement firewalls and monitor networks, COOs ensure operations continue despite cyber incidents, manage vendor cybersecurity across supply chains, and align operational processes with security requirements.
This distinction matters because cyber attacks increasingly target operational disruption rather than data theft. Ransomware encrypts production systems, supply chain compromises inject malware through vendor connections, and distributed denial-of-service attacks overwhelm customer-facing operations. These threats directly impact the operational domains COOs control: manufacturing, logistics, customer service, and supplier relationships.
Recent data underscores operational cybersecurity’s urgency. Manufacturing experiences more cyber attacks than any other sector 23% of all ransomware incidents target industrial operations. Supply chain attacks increased 420% in 2023, with average recovery times exceeding 30 days. Third-party vendor breaches caused 63% of enterprise security incidents, exploiting operational dependencies COOs manage daily.
Operational vs. Technical Cybersecurity: Understanding this distinction guides appropriate COO engagement. Technical security firewalls, encryption, access controls remains CISO domain. Operational security vendor vetting, business continuity, incident response coordination, and supply chain resilience falls squarely within COO responsibility.
Critical Operational Cyber Risks
Several cyber threat categories demand specific COO attention due to direct operational impact and responsibility alignment.
Ransomware and Operational Shutdown
Ransomware represents the most immediate operational threat, encrypting critical systems and halting operations until ransom payment or system restoration. Modern ransomware variants target operational technology (OT) controlling physical processes manufacturing equipment, building systems, logistics networks.
COOs must ensure operations can function during extended system outages. This requires maintaining manual backup processes, documenting critical workflows independent of digital systems, and establishing clear decision frameworks for ransom payment decisions with operational, financial, legal, and ethical dimensions that transcend IT authority.
Supply Chain Compromise
The SolarWinds breach, which compromised thousands of organizations through trusted software updates, exemplified supply chain cyber risk. COOs manage vendor relationships providing operational capabilities logistics partners, software suppliers, equipment manufacturers. Each connection creates potential attack vectors requiring cybersecurity due diligence.
Leading operations organizations implement tiered vendor risk assessments, requiring cybersecurity certifications from critical suppliers, conducting regular audits, and maintaining contingency suppliers for mission-critical services. This vendor security management represents core operational risk management, not IT administration.
Operational Cyber Risk Matrix
| Threat Category | Operational Impact | COO Responsibility | Mitigation Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ransomware | Production shutdown, data loss | Business continuity planning | High – Implement offline backups |
| Supply Chain Attack | Third-party compromise | Vendor security vetting | High – Assess critical vendors |
| OT Malware | Physical system disruption | Industrial control security | Critical – Segment networks |
| DDoS Attack | Service unavailability | Capacity planning, failover | Medium – Deploy redundancy |
| Insider Threat | Sabotage, data theft | Access controls, monitoring | Medium – Implement least privilege |
Business Continuity and Incident Response
When cyber incidents occur, effective response determines whether disruptions last hours or months. COOs lead operational response components while CISOs handle technical remediation.
Incident Response Frameworks: Mature organizations maintain detailed incident response plans assigning clear responsibilities across functions. COOs typically lead the operational response stream, making decisions about production priorities, customer communication, manual operation activation, and resource allocation during recovery.
These plans require regular testing through tabletop exercises and simulations. Organizations conducting quarterly cyber incident drills report 60% faster recovery times than those testing annually or less frequently. Realistic exercises reveal gaps in plans, build organizational muscle memory, and establish communication patterns critical during high-stress incidents.
Communication and Stakeholder Management: COOs manage operational stakeholder communication during cyber incidents informing customers about service disruptions, coordinating with suppliers on delivery impacts, and updating employees about modified procedures. Clear, honest communication maintains trust while managing expectations during extended recovery periods.
Operational Technology Security: The Industrial Dimension
Manufacturing, energy, logistics, and infrastructure organizations face unique challenges securing operational technology industrial control systems, SCADA networks, and physical equipment with embedded computing. These systems weren’t designed for internet connectivity yet increasingly link to enterprise networks for efficiency and monitoring.
OT security demands operational leader engagement because modifications risk production disruptions. Patching industrial systems requires scheduled downtime, network segmentation affects operational visibility, and security controls may impact system performance. COOs must balance security requirements against operational continuity, making trade-off decisions requiring operational context CISOs lack.
Best Practices for OT Security: Leading manufacturers implement network segmentation isolating OT systems from enterprise IT, maintain offline backups of control system configurations, and establish rigorous change management for OT modifications. They also conduct regular vulnerability assessments during planned maintenance windows and maintain detailed asset inventories of all connected industrial equipment.
Third-Party Risk Management
Modern operations depend on extensive vendor ecosystems cloud service providers, logistics partners, software suppliers, and contractors. Each vendor relationship creates cybersecurity exposure requiring operational risk management.
COOs should implement tiered vendor risk frameworks. Critical vendors those whose compromise would halt operations require comprehensive security assessments, regular audits, contractual security commitments, and incident response coordination. Lower-risk vendors need basic security verification but less intensive oversight.
Contractual Protections: Service agreements should specify security requirements, breach notification timelines, liability allocation, and audit rights. COOs ensure contracts align with operational risk tolerance rather than accepting vendor standard terms that often limit liability while imposing minimal security obligations.
Building Operational Cyber Resilience
Beyond preventing attacks an impossible standard given threat sophistication operational leaders focus on resilience: maintaining critical functions during incidents and recovering rapidly afterward.
Resilience Components include redundant systems for critical operations, documented manual procedures activating when digital systems fail, distributed operations reducing single points of failure, and regular recovery testing validating continuity plans actually work.
Organizations achieving high cyber resilience share common practices: they maintain offline backups verified through regular restoration testing, segment networks limiting breach propagation, implement robust access controls with multi-factor authentication, and conduct regular employee training on security awareness and incident procedures.
Conclusion
Cybersecurity has evolved from technical specialty to operational imperative requiring COO engagement and leadership. The threats facing modern organizations ransomware shutting down production, supply chain compromises disrupting logistics, and operational technology attacks affecting physical systems demand operational expertise and decision-making authority that CISOs alone cannot provide.
Effective operational cybersecurity doesn’t require COOs to become technical security experts. It demands they understand cyber risks in operational terms, maintain business continuity capabilities for extended digital disruptions, secure supply chains through vendor risk management, and lead organizational responses when incidents occur.
The COOs successfully navigating today’s threat landscape recognize cybersecurity as core operational discipline alongside quality management, supply chain optimization, and efficiency improvement. They invest in resilience, test continuity plans, engage actively with security teams, and build organizational capabilities to maintain operations regardless of cyber disruptions. In an era where digital attacks can halt operations as effectively as equipment failures or supply shortages, operational cyber competence isn’t optional it’s essential for maintaining the operational excellence COOs are accountable for delivering.
