Understanding How Human Elements Shape Effective Incident Response in Today's Threat Landscape
In cybersecurity, technology is only as strong as the humans who implement and operate it. When a security incident occurs, the effectiveness of your response depends not just on having the right tools and procedures in place, but on how well your people can execute under pressure. At Dragnet, we've seen firsthand how the human factor can make or break an incident response effort. Understanding and planning for human behavior during cyber crises is essential for building a truly resilient cybersecurity posture.
An effective Incident Response Plan (IRP) goes beyond technical procedures—it must account for how people actually behave during high-stress situations. As outlined in our comprehensive incident response guidance, an Incident Response Plan is a structured set of procedures that an organization follows when dealing with a security breach or cyberattack, but the key word here is "structured." Without clear, actionable guidance that accounts for human decision-making patterns, even the best-written plan can fail when it matters most.
The foundation of any working incident response plan must include clearly outlined roles and responsibilities for different tasks during an incident, such as investigation, communication, and system restoration. However, beyond just assigning roles, effective plans must consider:
Clear Decision Trees: People under stress need simple, binary choices rather than complex judgment calls. Your IRP should provide clear "if-then" scenarios that minimize the cognitive load on responders.
Communication Protocols: Clear communication is key during a crisis. Your IRP should outline who needs to be notified, how they will be contacted, and the chain of command. But remember that communication during an incident is often chaotic. Build in redundancy and specify primary and backup communication methods.
Escalation Procedures: Establishing a process for escalating incidents based on severity to the appropriate personnel is crucial, but the escalation criteria must be clear enough that a stressed analyst can make the right call in minutes, not hours.
Just as a snowstorm, while picturesque, is a stark reminder of the unexpected disruptions that can strike at any moment, cyber incidents often happen when your team is least prepared. Your IRP must work at 3 AM on a weekend, when your most experienced staff might not be immediately available, and when the pressure to restore operations is intense.
The best incident response plans are worthless if your team has never practiced executing them. Tabletop exercises are controlled simulations that allow your team to walk through incident scenarios in a low-pressure environment, identifying gaps and building muscle memory for crisis response.
Effective tabletop exercises should mirror the chaos and pressure of real incidents while remaining educational rather than punitive. Start with scenarios relevant to your organization's specific threat landscape and gradually increase complexity as your team's confidence grows.
Focus on Decision Points: Rather than just walking through procedures, focus exercises on the critical decision points where human judgment is required. How quickly can your team identify the severity of an incident? Can they effectively communicate with stakeholders while managing technical response?
Test Communication Under Pressure: Who notifies employees of what is happening? And how? Who will notify your clients? How will their services be affected, if at all? These communication challenges become exponentially more difficult during an actual incident.
Practice Resource Allocation: During a real incident, your team will need to make rapid decisions about where to focus limited resources. Tabletop exercises should include scenarios where responders must prioritize competing demands.
After the incident has been resolved, conduct a thorough analysis to understand what went wrong and how it was handled. Document the incident, the response, and any lessons learned. This same principle applies to tabletop exercises—the debrief is often more valuable than the exercise itself.
Insider threats—whether malicious or accidental—present unique challenges for incident response teams. The human dynamics of responding to incidents caused by your own employees require special consideration and preparation.
When an employee causes a security incident, the emotional impact on the response team can be significant. Team members may feel betrayed (in cases of malicious insider threats) or sympathetic (in cases of honest mistakes). These emotions can cloud judgment and slow response times.
Insider incident response requires careful coordination between IT security, human resources, legal, and management teams. Define the roles and responsibilities of each team member during an incident. Assign specific tasks to individuals or teams to avoid confusion. For insider events, this includes:
The best defense against insider threats is fostering a security-conscious culture. Cultivating a security-aware culture is essential for the successful integration of penetration testing. Educate employees on the importance of cybersecurity and their role in maintaining it. Encourage a mindset where security is everyone's responsibility. This same principle applies to incident response—when employees understand their role in cybersecurity, they're more likely to report potential issues early and less likely to cause incidents through negligence.
Understanding how people make decisions under stress is crucial for designing incident response procedures that actually work when the pressure is on. Cognitive biases, information overload, and time pressure can all impact the quality of incident response decisions.
During a security incident, responders are dealing with incomplete information, time pressure, and often significant organizational pressure to restore operations quickly. Effective communication can prevent chaos and ensure everyone is on the same page, but communication itself can become overwhelming if not properly managed.
Information Filtering: Establish clear criteria for what information needs to be shared with whom and when. Not every responder needs every detail—provide role-appropriate information to prevent cognitive overload.
Decision Support Tools: Create checklists, flowcharts, and decision trees that help responders work through complex scenarios systematically rather than relying solely on memory or intuition.
Regular training and awareness programs can also help employees understand and adhere to policies and controls, closing gaps between documented procedures and real-world practices. This training should include stress inoculation—gradually exposing team members to higher-pressure scenarios so they can perform effectively when real incidents occur.
Leadership behavior during incidents significantly impacts team performance. Leaders who remain calm, communicate clearly, and support their teams' decision-making enable better response outcomes. Conversely, leaders who panic, micromanage, or blame responders during active incidents can significantly degrade response effectiveness.
Just as integrating penetration testing into your overall cybersecurity strategy and culture is a proactive and essential step in safeguarding your business from cyber threats, integrating human factors considerations into your incident response planning is equally critical.
Leverage the insights gained from penetration testing to inform future security initiatives. Use the findings to enhance security policies, improve incident response plans, and guide security awareness training programs. Apply this same approach to incident response—after every incident (and every tabletop exercise), gather feedback from responders about what worked well and what could be improved from a human factors perspective.
Document and Share Lessons Learned. Document the lessons learned from the penetration testing process and share them with relevant stakeholders. Sharing lessons learned fosters a culture of continuous improvement. This principle is especially important for incident response, where learning from human performance during high-stress situations can dramatically improve future response effectiveness.
Effective incident response isn't just about having the right technology and procedures—it's about understanding and planning for how people actually behave during crisis situations. By building incident response plans that account for human factors, regularly practicing through tabletop exercises, preparing for the unique challenges of insider events, and understanding decision-making under pressure, organizations can build truly resilient cybersecurity capabilities.
At Dragnet, our mission is to deliver defense-grade cybersecurity solutions to all. This includes not just protecting against external threats, but building organizational capabilities that account for the human element in cybersecurity. As every good soldier knows, when you are under siege, you need to make sure you have a battle plan—and that battle plan must be designed for the humans who will execute it under pressure.
For organizations looking to improve their incident response capabilities, remember that an Incident Response Plan is not just a nice-to-have; it's a necessity. But to be truly effective, that plan must be built with human factors in mind from the ground up.
For more information about building effective incident response capabilities that account for human factors, or to discuss your organization's specific incident response challenges, reach out to the cybersecurity experts at Dragnet.