About Calm Under Attack™

Preparing Organizations for the Day Technology Fails

Modern organizations depend on digital technology to deliver products, services, and mission outcomes.

A cyberattack, cloud outage, telecommunications failure, power disruption, vendor outage, natural disaster, bad software update, or human error can suddenly make critical technology unavailable. When that happens, the effects quickly reach beyond IT.

Operations may be disrupted. Employees may lose access to information and normal ways of working. Customers and stakeholders may still expect the organization to deliver.

Cybersecurity, incident response, disaster recovery, and business continuity all play important roles in preparing for disruption.

But organizations still face a practical problem while technology is being restored:

Can they keep doing what matters while critical technology is unavailable?

That's the focus of Operational Survival™.

The Operational Survival System™

The Operational Survival System™ is a methodology for helping organizations prepare to continue essential operations through technology disruption.

It grew from nearly four decades of experience across healthcare, technology, cybersecurity, and critical infrastructure, and is influenced by the principles of Idaho National Laboratory's Consequence-Driven Cyber-Informed Engineering (CCE).

Calm Under Attack™ is developing Operational Survival™ as a professional capability that experienced practitioners can apply with the organizations they support, protect, advise, or serve.

The goal is practical: help organizations become better prepared for the period between technology failure and recovery.

Technology will fail.

Organizations don't have to.

About Chris Dixon

Chris Dixon is the founder of Calm Under Attack™ and creator of the Operational Survival System™.

She brings nearly four decades of experience across technology, healthcare, cybersecurity, and critical infrastructure, including senior information security leadership and cybersecurity engineering across both IT and operational technology environments.

Her professional credentials include CISSP, CISM, CISA, CSX-P, and ITIL certifications spanning versions 2, 3, and 4.

Calm Under Attack grew from a practical question Chris returned to throughout her career:

Organizations invest significant time and resources in protecting technology and recovering it after disruption. How prepared are they to keep operating while that technology is unavailable?

That question became the foundation for Operational Survival™.

Today, Chris is developing the Operational Survival System™ into a methodology experienced practitioners can learn and apply with the organizations they serve.