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How a logistics company kept 92% of shipments moving with its systems down.
A competitor was hit by ransomware and stopped shipping for 11 days. This company had no plan for the same day. Skillfi's fractional CISO built a manual fallback for dispatch and tracking, tested it at every hub and cut recovery time from days to hours. It's how our fractional CISO service works: ready for the bad day before it comes.
Every truck depended on systems nobody had planned to lose.
The company moves freight and last-mile deliveries for retailers from three hubs. Dispatch, route planning, driver apps and customer tracking all ran on connected systems, and nothing worked on paper anymore.
Then a competitor was hit by ransomware and couldn't ship for 11 days. Two of this company's largest customers asked the same question: what happens if it's you? Nobody had an answer. A failed update the year before had stopped dispatch for most of a day, backups had never been fully restored, and the IT team guessed a real recovery would take at least three days.
Our biggest customer asked what we'd do if our systems went down. The honest answer was: park the trucks and hope.
COO, client
Plan for the worst day, then practise it until it's boring.
Our fractional CISO led the work with IT and the hub managers. Hub fallback procedures were designed alongside a fractional COO, so they worked on a real loading dock, not just on paper.
Know what matters most
Every system ranked by how long the business could live without it, with recovery targets agreed by leadership.
Keep trucks moving by hand
Printed route packs, offline load sheets, a phone tree for drivers and a simple way to update customers without the tracking system.
Bring systems back fast
Offline backups, a step-by-step restore order and restore tests run until core systems came back in under 9 hours.
5 months, step by step
From "park the trucks and hope" to a tested plan every hub can run. Here's how the engagement unfolded.
- Week 1–324 systems ranked
Impact assessment
Every system mapped and ranked by how long dispatch, delivery and billing could survive without it.
- Week 3–6First test: 61 hrs
Backups & restore plan
Offline backups set up, a restore order agreed and the first full restore test run. It took 61 hours.
- Month 2–38 runbooks
Manual fallback
Paper route packs, offline load sheets, driver phone trees and customer update templates built with each hub.
- Month 331 gaps fixed
Tabletop exercise
Leadership, IT, hub managers and customer service walked through a ransomware morning, hour by hour.
- Month 43 hubs tested
Hub drills
Each hub ran a live shift on the manual fallback, one at a time, while restore tests continued in parallel.
- Month 592% kept moving
Full outage drill
All systems switched off for 6 hours across all three hubs. 92% of shipments still went out.
The first nine hours, planned
When systems go down, nobody has to guess. Every team knows its first move, and trucks keep leaving the dock.
Stop the spread
- Isolate affected systems
- Call the response team
- Declare manual mode
Keep trucks rolling
- Printed route packs
- Offline load sheets
- Driver phone tree
Customers hear it first
- Pre-approved updates
- Key account calls
- Insurer & legal notified
Systems back in order
- Clean backups restored
- Dispatch first, billing last
- Data re-entered & checked
Ready for the bad day
Hours to recover core systems
Measured in a full restore test, not estimated.
Two months after the drill, a supplier outage took our dispatch system down for four hours. The hubs switched to manual in minutes and we didn't miss a single delivery window.
COO, clientWhat happens if your systems go down tomorrow?
Our fractional CISO will build a response plan that fits your operations, test it with your teams and cut your recovery time from days to hours. Want the manual fallback built into how you operate? Add a fractional COO.
- Impact assessment & priorities
- Manual fallback runbooks
- Tested backups & restore plan
- Tabletop & live drills
30 minutes. No obligation.
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