RIZOM Co-Designs Cyber Trauma Workshop with Aston Business School

On 27 June 2026, RIZOM delivered a co-designed three-hour workshop on cyber trauma and organisational resilience with students from Aston Business School as part of its Cyber Security Management teaching programme (MSc).

The session explored a dimension often underrepresented in cybersecurity education: what happens to people, trust, and organisational functioning when business continuity breaks down.

Inviting Empathy To the Room

Throughout the workshop, students explored how the same cyber incident can generate very different experiences depending on stakeholder perspective.

In addition to empathy mapping, participants were asked an additional question:

What has broken for this stakeholder?

The exercise surfaced recurring themes across roles, including trust, confidence, communication, responsibility, and uncertainty.

By comparing these perspectives, students examined recovery as rebuilding organisational functioning after disruption.

Practical Resilience Planning

In the second half of the session, students translated these empathy insights into practical resilience measures using the CLEAR framework, focusing on:

• communication

• leadership support

• emotional support

• anxiety reduction

• trust rebuilding

Participants were also invited to consider:

What visible action would show shareholders that trust is being repaired?

This encouraged students to connect resilience planning with observable actions that support recovery across technical, organisational, and human dimensions.

Looking Ahead

The workshop formed part of RIZOM’s broader work exploring the relationship between operational continuity, human resilience, and organisational return.

We are grateful to Dr Laura Di Chiacchio, Aston Business School, and the students for creating space for interdisciplinary experimentation at the intersection of cybersecurity, psychology, leadership, and organisational resilience.

We are also exploring how elements of this approach could be adapted for wider organisational contexts, including SME resilience programmes.

Cyber Security Management MSc | Aston Business School | Birmingham