The Optimist

You crossed the crisis with an iron conviction: it can't possibly be that bad. It was. You paid roughly everything there was to pay — money, time, nerves and a few relationships — and you did it with the best intentions: you protected the deadlines, you trusted your partners, you didn't want to scare the team. Good intentions are also why real directors go through exactly what you just did — so no, you're not a unique case, you're a classic one. The genuinely optimistic part: from this level, every step is upward, and the first three steps are cheap.

3 recommendations

Start with the golden rule of payments: no new bank account receives money without a phone call to the number you already knew — zero investment, the most expensive fraud avoided.
Put someone (your IT company will do) in charge of daily backups — and have them show you, once a month, that the restore actually works. Not that it "exists".
Tell your team the story of the 30 days — the real version, your own mistakes included: one hour of honesty is worth a year of signed policies.

What's your profile?

12 decisions, 3 minutes — and you'll know how you lead when nobody gives you time to think.

Play it yourself — 3 minutes

Then this story isn't just a game for you.

Companies in regulated sectors have legal security obligations — NIS2, in Romania GEO 155/2024 — with reporting deadlines, mandatory measures and real fines. CERTO walks you through them step by step, in plain language, no jargon.

See CERTO — NIS2 compliance without the bureaucracy

The good news: everything you practised here can be trained for real.

The instinct from that first email, the reflex to pick up the phone and verify, a culture where people report — that is exactly what our training programmes build, with realistic simulations and no blame hunts.

See the training programme Book a free briefing

A work of fiction — the characters and companies are invented. The attack mechanisms and the lessons are real.