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Communicating Under Pressure: New Guidance for Service Providers
Earlier this month, six national cybersecurity agencies, including CISA and NCSC-UK, released joint guidance on communicating during service outages. The guidance names accuracy, transparency, and continuous updates as core principles. BlackBerry® Secure Communications supports these standards with end-to-end encryption, sovereign infrastructure, and government-grade certifications that keep crisis coordination confidential and reliable.
Sep 15, 2026
·Blog
·Secure Communications
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On September 2, 2026, six of the world's leading national cybersecurity agencies published a joint document titled Communicating Under Pressure: Best Practices for Service Providers. The authoring agencies, CISA, the FBI, Australia's ACSC, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, NCSC-NZ, and NCSC-UK, delivered a clear message to anyone operating IT and operational technology systems: during a major outage, how you communicate matters as much as how you fix the problem.
That message deserves attention from every government agency and critical infrastructure operator. A single disruption rarely stays contained. As the guidance notes, an outage at one organization can cascade across interconnected systems, while speculation from end users can make the damage worse. For sectors that keep the lights on, water flowing, and hospitals running, poor communication during a crisis can compound the very failure it was meant to manage.
This post breaks down what the new guidance asks of service providers, why communication failures carry such steep costs, and how secure communications infrastructure helps organizations meet these standards without exposing sensitive information in the process.
What Does the New Cybersecurity Guidance Require?
The joint guidance centers on a straightforward idea: effective communication during an outage is as critical as technical remediation. Service providers are asked to prepare communication protocols in advance, give a factual summary tailored to predefined audiences, avoid public relations spin, and issue frequent updates as circumstances change.
The document lays out several core principles that decision-makers should treat as a baseline:
Accuracy. Share confirmed facts early and state clearly what the issue is and what it is not. If the root cause remains under investigation, avoid premature conclusions.
Frequency. Provide continuous, time-stamped updates, even when there is no new information to report. Silence invites speculation.
Clarity. Lead with a bottom line upfront that serves both technical teams and the public. Avoid vague language such as "service degradation."
Accountability. Acknowledge the impact, own the outcomes, and explain the root cause transparently once it is safe to do so.
The guidance also stresses an important caveat. When an outage stems from suspected or confirmed malicious activity, communications must protect operational security and align with any law enforcement investigation. Transparency, in other words, must be balanced against the risk of tipping off an adversary.
Why Do Communication Failures Cost So Much?
Service outages create enough disruption on their own. Add confusion and the damage grows. When messaging is vague or delayed, end users fill the gap with guesswork and misinformation tends to travel faster than accurate updates.
The consequences are practical, not abstract. Speculation amplifies panic. Stakeholders making real-time, risk-based decisions act on incomplete information. And trust erodes quickly when an organization appears to manage its reputation rather than inform the people depending on it.
For critical infrastructure operators, these risks compound. Energy providers, water utilities, transportation networks, and healthcare systems serve populations that need reliable information to respond safely. When those stakeholders lose confidence in the source, the operational impact of a technical failure extends well beyond the systems themselves. Restoring service is only half the challenge. Restoring trust is the other half, and it is far harder to rebuild.
Why Secure Communications Matter During a Crisis
Strong communication principles assume one thing that is easy to overlook: the communication channel itself is reliable and protected. During a crisis, that assumption cannot be taken for granted.
Outage notifications and coordination messages carry sensitive details, and they must reach authorized personnel without interception or delay. Consider what happens when the primary systems are the ones under attack. The guidance itself recommends establishing and regularly testing backup communication methods for moments when primary channels are degraded or compromised. A communication plan that depends on the same infrastructure experiencing the outage is a plan with a single point of failure.
Coordination adds another layer of complexity. Major incidents often require multiple agencies, partners, and field teams to work from the same information at the same time. That coordination must happen over channels that are encrypted, resilient, and under the organization's own control — not routed through third-party systems where data and encryption keys live on someone else's servers.
This is the gap BlackBerry Secure Communications is built to close. The solution delivers government-grade secure communications for crisis response teams, helping keep sensitive incident details confidential while enabling the rapid, coordinated messaging the guidance calls for.
How BlackBerry Secure Communications Supports the Guidance
Meeting the joint guidance requires both a communication strategy and infrastructure capable of executing it under pressure. BlackBerry Secure Communications addresses the infrastructure side in four ways that map directly to the agencies' recommendations.
End-to-End Encryption for Confidential, Tamper-Proof Messaging
BlackBerry Secure Communications encrypts voice, messaging, files, and metadata at rest, in transit, and on-device. During an outage, coordination messages stay confidential and cannot be intercepted or altered by an adversary watching for an opening. The guidance warns that some technical details, if exposed, could help threat actors target other customers with similar configurations. Encryption keeps that information among the people authorized to see it.
Sovereign Infrastructure You Control
BlackBerry enables organizations to decide where their data lives with deployment options that include on-premises environments, hybrid models, and fully air-gapped dark sites. This matters for crisis communication because it removes the dependency the guidance warns against. When your communication channel does not rely on foreign-controlled or third-party infrastructure, you retain the ability to coordinate even when external systems are compromised. Sovereign control also means encryption keys and sensitive data stay under your jurisdiction.
Certified to Standards Government Agencies Recognize
BlackBerry Secure Communications is validated by leading global certifications, including NSA CSfC, NATO Security Accreditation, Common Criteria, and Canada Secret. For agencies operating under the requirements of CISA, NCSC-UK, and allied governments, these certifications provide independent proof that the solution meets the rigorous security standards that mission-critical communication demands. Certification turns "trust us" into verifiable assurance.
Real-Time, Multi-Agency Coordination
The guidance calls for consistent messaging across internal and external audiences and for cross-functional teams to align on the facts before speaking publicly. BlackBerry supports fully encrypted group communication, allowing agencies, partners, and field teams to coordinate a unified response in real time. Everyone works from the same protected source of truth.
Preparing Before the Crisis Arrives
The clearest takeaway from the joint guidance is that effective outage communication cannot be improvised. It requires playbooks, defined roles, tested backup channels, and infrastructure that holds up when primary systems do not. Organizations that build these protocols in advance are the ones that maintain trust when a disruption hits.
Communication strategy and secure infrastructure work together. A well-rehearsed plan means little if the channel carrying it can be intercepted and the most secure channel offers little if no one has planned how to use it. Service providers that pair both are positioned to meet the standards these agencies have set and to protect operational resilience when it counts.
For government agencies and critical infrastructure operators looking to strengthen their crisis communication posture, BlackBerry Secure Communications offers the sovereign, certified foundation that turns best-practice guidance into operational reality.
Learn More: Visit the BlackBerry CI Fortify Resource Center
Communicating Under Pressure: New Guidance for Service Providers
Earlier this month, six national cybersecurity agencies, including CISA and NCSC-UK, released joint guidance on communicating during service outages. The guidance names accuracy, transparency, and continuous updates as core principles. BlackBerry® Secure Communications supports these standards with end-to-end encryption, sovereign infrastructure, and government-grade certifications that keep crisis coordination confidential and reliable.
Sep 15, 2026
·Blog
·Secure Communications
On September 2, 2026, six of the world's leading national cybersecurity agencies published a joint document titled Communicating Under Pressure: Best Practices for Service Providers. The authoring agencies, CISA, the FBI, Australia's ACSC, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, NCSC-NZ, and NCSC-UK, delivered a clear message to anyone operating IT and operational technology systems: during a major outage, how you communicate matters as much as how you fix the problem.
That message deserves attention from every government agency and critical infrastructure operator. A single disruption rarely stays contained. As the guidance notes, an outage at one organization can cascade across interconnected systems, while speculation from end users can make the damage worse. For sectors that keep the lights on, water flowing, and hospitals running, poor communication during a crisis can compound the very failure it was meant to manage.
This post breaks down what the new guidance asks of service providers, why communication failures carry such steep costs, and how secure communications infrastructure helps organizations meet these standards without exposing sensitive information in the process.
What Does the New Cybersecurity Guidance Require?
The joint guidance centers on a straightforward idea: effective communication during an outage is as critical as technical remediation. Service providers are asked to prepare communication protocols in advance, give a factual summary tailored to predefined audiences, avoid public relations spin, and issue frequent updates as circumstances change.
The document lays out several core principles that decision-makers should treat as a baseline:
Accuracy. Share confirmed facts early and state clearly what the issue is and what it is not. If the root cause remains under investigation, avoid premature conclusions.
Frequency. Provide continuous, time-stamped updates, even when there is no new information to report. Silence invites speculation.
Clarity. Lead with a bottom line upfront that serves both technical teams and the public. Avoid vague language such as "service degradation."
Accountability. Acknowledge the impact, own the outcomes, and explain the root cause transparently once it is safe to do so.
The guidance also stresses an important caveat. When an outage stems from suspected or confirmed malicious activity, communications must protect operational security and align with any law enforcement investigation. Transparency, in other words, must be balanced against the risk of tipping off an adversary.
Why Do Communication Failures Cost So Much?
Service outages create enough disruption on their own. Add confusion and the damage grows. When messaging is vague or delayed, end users fill the gap with guesswork and misinformation tends to travel faster than accurate updates.
The consequences are practical, not abstract. Speculation amplifies panic. Stakeholders making real-time, risk-based decisions act on incomplete information. And trust erodes quickly when an organization appears to manage its reputation rather than inform the people depending on it.
For critical infrastructure operators, these risks compound. Energy providers, water utilities, transportation networks, and healthcare systems serve populations that need reliable information to respond safely. When those stakeholders lose confidence in the source, the operational impact of a technical failure extends well beyond the systems themselves. Restoring service is only half the challenge. Restoring trust is the other half, and it is far harder to rebuild.
Why Secure Communications Matter During a Crisis
Strong communication principles assume one thing that is easy to overlook: the communication channel itself is reliable and protected. During a crisis, that assumption cannot be taken for granted.
Outage notifications and coordination messages carry sensitive details, and they must reach authorized personnel without interception or delay. Consider what happens when the primary systems are the ones under attack. The guidance itself recommends establishing and regularly testing backup communication methods for moments when primary channels are degraded or compromised. A communication plan that depends on the same infrastructure experiencing the outage is a plan with a single point of failure.
Coordination adds another layer of complexity. Major incidents often require multiple agencies, partners, and field teams to work from the same information at the same time. That coordination must happen over channels that are encrypted, resilient, and under the organization's own control — not routed through third-party systems where data and encryption keys live on someone else's servers.
This is the gap BlackBerry Secure Communications is built to close. The solution delivers government-grade secure communications for crisis response teams, helping keep sensitive incident details confidential while enabling the rapid, coordinated messaging the guidance calls for.
How BlackBerry Secure Communications Supports the Guidance
Meeting the joint guidance requires both a communication strategy and infrastructure capable of executing it under pressure. BlackBerry Secure Communications addresses the infrastructure side in four ways that map directly to the agencies' recommendations.
End-to-End Encryption for Confidential, Tamper-Proof Messaging
BlackBerry Secure Communications encrypts voice, messaging, files, and metadata at rest, in transit, and on-device. During an outage, coordination messages stay confidential and cannot be intercepted or altered by an adversary watching for an opening. The guidance warns that some technical details, if exposed, could help threat actors target other customers with similar configurations. Encryption keeps that information among the people authorized to see it.
Sovereign Infrastructure You Control
BlackBerry enables organizations to decide where their data lives with deployment options that include on-premises environments, hybrid models, and fully air-gapped dark sites. This matters for crisis communication because it removes the dependency the guidance warns against. When your communication channel does not rely on foreign-controlled or third-party infrastructure, you retain the ability to coordinate even when external systems are compromised. Sovereign control also means encryption keys and sensitive data stay under your jurisdiction.
Certified to Standards Government Agencies Recognize
BlackBerry Secure Communications is validated by leading global certifications, including NSA CSfC, NATO Security Accreditation, Common Criteria, and Canada Secret. For agencies operating under the requirements of CISA, NCSC-UK, and allied governments, these certifications provide independent proof that the solution meets the rigorous security standards that mission-critical communication demands. Certification turns "trust us" into verifiable assurance.
Real-Time, Multi-Agency Coordination
The guidance calls for consistent messaging across internal and external audiences and for cross-functional teams to align on the facts before speaking publicly. BlackBerry supports fully encrypted group communication, allowing agencies, partners, and field teams to coordinate a unified response in real time. Everyone works from the same protected source of truth.
Preparing Before the Crisis Arrives
The clearest takeaway from the joint guidance is that effective outage communication cannot be improvised. It requires playbooks, defined roles, tested backup channels, and infrastructure that holds up when primary systems do not. Organizations that build these protocols in advance are the ones that maintain trust when a disruption hits.
Communication strategy and secure infrastructure work together. A well-rehearsed plan means little if the channel carrying it can be intercepted and the most secure channel offers little if no one has planned how to use it. Service providers that pair both are positioned to meet the standards these agencies have set and to protect operational resilience when it counts.
For government agencies and critical infrastructure operators looking to strengthen their crisis communication posture, BlackBerry Secure Communications offers the sovereign, certified foundation that turns best-practice guidance into operational reality.
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