The Playbook Imperative: Preparing for AI Threats

Hiral Mehta of Mayer Brown on Prioritizing Threat Containment Over Quick Recovery Matthew Perry • November 19, 2025

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the threat landscape, amplifying the speed and sophistication of fraud, social engineering and insider-driven attacks.

See Also: Thwarting Cyberthreats in the Power Sector

When a cyber incident strikes, organizations face a critical decision: Restore operations quickly or stop the bleeding first. "By focusing on restoring services, you may miss out on the actual fraud. That is, you don't know what you don't know. This can be phase one of a three-phase attack," said Hiral Mehta, partner at Mayer Brown LLP.

Organizations must establish comprehensive incident response playbooks before crises occur. "When there's an issue, people panic, people make bad decisions, and sometimes there's less transparency than there should be, and end up being in trouble when they shouldn't have," he said. The solution lies ...