In the heat of an IT crisis — a ransomware attack, a catastrophic system outage, or a data exfiltration event — technical expertise is only one piece of the puzzle. Success or failure often hinges on communication, coordination, and decision-making under pressure. For all the sophisticated tools and frameworks IT professionals bring to the table, incident response remains fundamentally a human endeavor. And in that regard, IT is not alone. Other domains with high stakes — emergency management, aviation, healthcare — have been perfecting the art of crisis response for decades. Two frameworks, in particular, stand out as rich sources of insight: the Incident Command System (ICS) and Crew Resource Management (CRM).
These disciplines may seem distant from IT, but their lessons are strikingly applicable. Whether responding to a wildfire, piloting an aircraft through turbulence, or managing a major cybersecurity breach, the same principles of teamwork, clear communication, and role clarity apply. IT teams that embrace these frameworks can improve not just their technical response, but the organizational dynamics that underpin their success in high-pressure environments.
The Incident Command System: Structured Leadership Under Chaos
The Incident Command System (ICS) was born out of necessity. Originally developed in the 1970s to manage large-scale wildfires in California, ICS offers a standardized, scalable framework for managing emergencies of all kinds, from hurricanes to terrorist attacks. What makes ICS so effective is its ability to impose structure on chaos, ensuring that everyone involved knows their role, who they report to, and what actions to prioritize.
In ICS, roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, and authority is centralized under an Incident Commander (IC), who oversees the response effort. The IC is supported by specialized roles, such as Operations, Logistics, and Planning, each of which handles a specific aspect of the incident. This hierarchical structure prevents confusion, reduces redundant efforts, and ensures that critical decisions are made swiftly and efficiently.
IT incident response teams often lack this level of structured leadership. While most organizations designate an incident manager during a crisis, the boundaries of authority and responsibility can blur under pressure. Technical staff may focus on their own tasks without understanding the broader priorities, while leadership may struggle to make timely decisions due to information silos or conflicting perspectives. Adopting ICS principles can help IT teams address these challenges.
For example, IT teams could designate an Incident Commander to act as the single point of accountability during a breach or outage. This person would coordinate efforts across technical and non-technical teams, ensuring that priorities — such as containment, remediation, and communication — are clearly understood. Supporting roles, such as someone to handle external communications (e.g., with customers or regulatory bodies) and someone to monitor resource allocation (e.g., ensuring the availability of cloud infrastructure or backup systems), can further enhance coordination.
Additionally, ICS emphasizes the importance of briefings and situational awareness. Regular, concise updates ensure that everyone involved in the incident response stays aligned, even as the situation evolves. This mirrors the concept of stand-up meetings often used in agile software development but extends it to the fast-paced, unpredictable environment of incident response.
Crew Resource Management: Leveraging the Power of Teams
While ICS provides a blueprint for structuring a response, Crew Resource Management (CRM) offers critical insights into the human factors of crisis management. Developed in the aviation industry in the 1970s following a series of preventable accidents, CRM focuses on the interpersonal dynamics that can make or break a team under pressure. It emphasizes communication, teamwork, decision-making, and the avoidance of hierarchical pitfalls like deference to authority.
One of CRM’s key tenets is flattening hierarchies in critical moments. While the captain of an aircraft is ultimately in charge, CRM encourages copilots and crew members to speak up if they notice a problem, regardless of rank. This “challenge-response” dynamic ensures that critical issues don’t go unnoticed due to fear of contradicting a superior. In IT, where junior engineers or analysts are often the first to detect anomalies — such as unusual traffic patterns or system errors — this principle is invaluable. Empowering team members to voice concerns without fear of retribution can prevent small issues from snowballing into major incidents.
CRM also teaches the importance of standardized communication. In aviation, vague or ambiguous language can have catastrophic consequences. Pilots and air traffic controllers rely on highly specific phrasing to ensure mutual understanding — for instance, saying "roger" to confirm receipt of instructions or "unable" to indicate that an action cannot be performed. IT teams responding to incidents can adopt similar practices. Instead of informal discussions that might leave room for misinterpretation, teams could use structured communication protocols to confirm actions, escalate issues, and report progress.
Additionally, CRM’s focus on stress management and workload distribution is directly relevant to IT incident response. Crises often involve long hours, high stakes, and mental fatigue, all of which can impair judgment and performance. CRM-trained pilots are taught techniques to stay calm under pressure, delegate tasks effectively, and recognize when stress is impacting their decision-making. IT teams can benefit from adopting these strategies, especially during prolonged incidents like ransomware negotiations or multi-day outage recoveries.
Applying These Lessons to IT Incident Response
Blending ICS and CRM principles into IT incident response doesn’t require a wholesale cultural overhaul. Instead, it involves selectively adopting practices that address common pain points in handling IT crises.
For example, incident response teams can adopt clear role assignments, as in ICS, to ensure that everyone understands their responsibilities during a breach. This might include designating a “forensics lead” to analyze attacker behavior, a “communications lead” to handle external messaging, and a “technical lead” to manage containment and remediation efforts.
Similarly, CRM-inspired practices can improve team communication during a crisis. Using tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams, responders can establish structured communication channels — for instance, a dedicated channel for escalating critical issues, where messages follow a pre-agreed format like "ALERT Unusual outbound traffic on port 443 from server X." Clear, standardized messaging reduces ambiguity and speeds up decision-making.
Additionally, both ICS and CRM emphasize the importance of post-incident reviews (similar to aviation’s “debriefs” after a flight). These reviews should go beyond technical analysis to examine team dynamics, decision-making processes, and communication gaps. The goal is not just to fix what went wrong but to learn how the team can perform better in the next crisis.
Challenges in Adoption
While the lessons from ICS and CRM are compelling, adapting them to IT requires effort and commitment. One challenge is cultural: IT organizations often prioritize technical expertise over soft skills like communication and teamwork. Overcoming this bias requires leadership buy-in and a shift in mindset to treat incident response as a multidisciplinary effort, not just a technical one.
Another challenge is scalability. In small IT teams, roles may overlap, and resources may be limited. However, even in such cases, adopting the principles of structured leadership and clear communication can yield significant benefits.
Conclusion
The worlds of wildfire management, aviation, and IT might seem worlds apart, but when it comes to responding to incidents, the core challenges — coordination, communication, and decision-making — are strikingly similar. By learning from proven frameworks like the Incident Command System and Crew Resource Management, IT teams can strengthen their incident response capabilities, turning inevitable crises into opportunities for growth and improvement.
In the end, it’s not just about containing the breach or fixing the outage — it’s about building resilient teams that thrive under pressure and emerge stronger, regardless of the domain.
