When a breach hits, it’s not the checklist that fails first. It’s the people. Humans are naturally wired to a fight-or-flight mechanism, but sometimes, this survival response hinders progressive action in solving the issue. Security teams often build incident response (IR) playbooks assuming ideal conditions — tools are online, team leads are available and everyone functions at peak performance. However, fear, confusion and tunnel vision often replace logic during an actual attack.
Static Plans Break in Dynamic Situations
Most IR plans are built like linear flowcharts, except cyber incidents are anything but linear. They escalate unpredictably, with systems failing, stakeholders panicking and attackers adapting. Traditional playbooks are often written to satisfy compliance rather than meet reality and collapse under the weight of this chaos.
A 2025 report found that 55% of enterprises have an incident response plan, and the other half are simply winging it. Not all of these organizations conduct simulations to support and regularly update the plan. An IR strategy that only exists on paper or in PowerPoint doesn’t prepare teams for decision fatigue, miscommunication or leadership blackouts.
Panic Disrupts Cognitive Processing
Stress alters perception. In a high-pressure environment, survival instincts override the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for logic and decision-making. Teams freeze, hyper-focus on irrelevant details or default to unsafe shortcuts. Under imperfect conditions, incident responders may fail to defend systems during a ransomware event. This is where most IR plans fail, as they don’t account for how uncertainty and panic can easily override protocol.
Centralized Command Structures Add Latency
Many plans rely on a centralized command-and-control model. But what happens when that central point is unreachable or overwhelmed? Response stalls.
Decentralized governance increases responsiveness and avoids decision bottlenecks, especially in large entities. In one study, decentralized control systems were observed to be more robust than their centralized counterparts.
Empowering cross-functional, modular teams to act autonomously increases the speed of action. The faster an organization can move from detection to containment, the lower the expense. The average data breach costs $4.45 million globally, but with quicker isolation responses, this figure could be even lower.
Overreliance on Tools Breeds False Confidence
Security leaders often trust their tech stack more than their team, only to find that no tool can substitute for trained human response. Plans built around tools instead of people create a dangerous illusion of control. When dashboards go dark, how well can a team improvise? Incident response must be human-first, with tooling built to support and not lead the process.
In one survey, 86% of executives highly regarded their security operations, confident in their readiness to prevent attacks. However, 39% of businesses have suffered at least one ransomware attack. This perceived false confidence can hurt the company instead of protecting it.
Role Fluidity Beats Rigid Hierarchies
Designating strict roles may seem logical in tabletop exercises, but real-world incidents rarely go as planned. Don’t assign one heavy role to a specific person. Instead, individuals across security, legal and communication departments should be trained to understand each other’s roles to create the redundancy needed for familiarity.
This reduces role-based points of failure. Everyone doesn’t need to be an expert, but they should at least know the map.
Regular and Chaos-Based Simulations Work
Drills that only use test checklists are cosmetic. Real preparedness requires stress-based simulations that practice what to do if team members are missing, tooling is disabled or red-team escalations occur mid-drill.
Netflix’s Chaos Monkey is a great precedent. Break things deliberately so teams normalize uncertainty. When people practice discomfort, they stop panicking in it.
It’s recommended that a full-scope IR simulation be run annually. Larger, more complex organizations or those in highly regulated industries may choose to conduct simulations more frequently to ensure human-centric readiness.
Culture Drives Resilience
Plans don’t build resilience. It’s culture that does. Teams should be encouraged to challenge protocol, raise issues during retros and regularly test “what if” failure points. Cyber resilience is in the daily practice, not in a series of unfamiliar steps.
Research from Google’s Project Aristotle revealed that psychological safety — the belief that one can speak up without repercussion — is the most important factor in high-performing teams. Apply this to IR, and you get a team that doesn’t wait for permission when the house is burning.
Make Room for Human Response From Protocol to Practice
Cybersecurity plans fail during panic because they’re designed for order, not entropy. To fix this, rewrite plans around the people. That includes accounting for fear, miscommunication, missing resources and delayed leadership. Simulate chaos, design for mess and above all, train humans.
Devin Partida is an industrial tech writer and the Editor-in-Chief of ReHack.com, a digital magazine for all things technology, big data, cryptocurrency, and more. To read more from Devin, please check out the site.
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