When a cyberattack strikes, chaos often follows. Systems shut down, communications collapse, and leadership scrambles to understand what’s happening. Yet, amid the turmoil, one fact is clear: prevention alone is no longer enough.

That’s the insight that led Arvind Parthasarathi, veteran entrepreneur and founder of CYGNVS, to create a platform designed not just to prevent cyber incidents, but to help organizations respond to them with clarity, speed, and resilience.

From Academia to Startup Vision

After selling his previous startup, Parthasarathi turned his attention to giving back. Working pro bono, he joined Project Crossroads, a research initiative spanning nine global universities, including MIT, Stanford, Oxford, and Tokyo. Their mission: to establish a “standard of care” for boards and executives around cybersecurity oversight.

What he discovered was striking. “Organizations were pouring money into prevention,” he recalled, “but when incidents actually happened, the response was total chaos.”

That realization became the seed for CYGNVS (pronounced Sig-nus). Founded in January 2020 in a borrowed conference room, the company’s name draws from Cygnus, Latin for “swan.” Cyber incidents, often likened to Black Swan events, demand a new kind of preparedness—and CYGNVS was built to provide it.

The Out-of-Band Advantage

At the heart of CYGNVS is the idea of an “out-of-band” platform—a secure, independent command center organizations can rely on when traditional systems are compromised.

Attackers increasingly target corporate communications first—email, conferencing tools, even identity systems—precisely because that’s where crisis coordination happens. If the attackers are already listening in, a company’s defenses can crumble before they’re even activated.

Parthasarathi compares CYGNVS to a hurricane bunker: a place where legal teams, executives, and responders can gather safely, run playbooks, and protect privilege and confidentiality. Crucially, the system is company-owned—not tied to individual accounts vulnerable to insider threats or employee turnover.

Rethinking Crisis Response

Traditional incident response plans often sit buried in dusty binders or forgotten folders. In practice, they’re rarely updated, much less followed in a real emergency. CYGNVS transforms those outdated manuals into interactive, mobile-first workflows.

Rather than confronting leaders with an 80-page document during a breach, the platform drip-feeds tasks step by step—adaptive, guided, and designed for how people actually behave under stress. “Human beings in crisis don’t think the same way,” Parthasarathi explained. “So we shift the paradigm: two steps now, two steps later, until the organization executes as one.”

The result is muscle memory. Just as submariners drill daily for emergencies, CYGNVS clients run tabletop exercises frequently—not annually, but monthly, even weekly—building resilience into their organizational DNA.

Boards in the Spotlight

Perhaps the most compelling part of the conversation is the shifting role of corporate boards. Regulators like the SEC now expect directors to play an active role in cyber oversight. Yet many boardrooms struggle to bridge the language gap between cybersecurity experts and business leaders.

Parthasarathi has seen this firsthand. In one public company board meeting, he watched directors disengage—scrolling on their phones—during a well-prepared cybersecurity briefing. The problem wasn’t apathy; it was translation. Cyber risk was being presented as a technical issue, not the business risk it truly is.

To close the gap, CYGNVS advocates for “board playbooks”—clear definitions of when the board must be informed, what thresholds trigger involvement, and what decisions directors must be prepared to make. Even more, Parthasarathi encourages directors to participate directly in tabletop exercises, gaining hands-on experience with their role in incident response.

AI: A Double-Edged Sword

The conversation inevitably turned to AI, perhaps the most disruptive force in both cyber offense and defense today.

“AI is, unfortunately, perfectly suited for the bad guys,” Parthasarathi warned. Phishing emails that once betrayed themselves with typos and crude logos are now polished, hyper-targeted, and frighteningly convincing. Attackers can deploy AI at scale, tailoring lures to individual employees with chilling precision.

For defenders, the challenge is different: high-quality data for training incident-specific AI is scarce, because real incidents are tightly confidential. Off-the-shelf models may provide generic advice, but in the heat of a breach, “no one wants a chatbot,” Parthasarathi said. What’s needed are purpose-built AI systems that can sift through complex options, provide context, and support human decision-makers without replacing them.

The Evolving Role of the CISO

All of this signals a dramatic evolution in the role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Once primarily technical, today’s CISO is increasingly a risk leader—sitting alongside the CEO, CFO, and board to weigh fiduciary and regulatory decisions.

Parthasarathi shared the story of a CISO who, during a tabletop, declared himself the “malicious insider” and walked out, forcing the board and management to respond without leaning on him. The exercise was a revelation: cybersecurity leadership cannot rest on one person’s shoulders. It must be woven into the fabric of the organization.

Toward a More Resilient Future

As businesses face an escalating wave of threats—from state-backed actors to AI-powered phishing—one truth resonates: resilience is not optional. Prevention may fail, but preparation and coordinated response can mean the difference between recovery and catastrophe.

With CYGNVS, Parthasarathi aims to be the Rosetta Stone between technical teams, external partners, and corporate leadership. By building secure command centers, adaptive playbooks, and cross-functional readiness, he’s helping organizations not only survive crises, but emerge stronger.

As he puts it, “There’s no way any organization can guarantee they’ll never have an event. The only choice is to build resiliency—to endure, to respond, and to move on.”