While training under controlled situations does offer a lot of value in ensuring your cybersecurity teams will be prepared for an attack, the suddenness of an actual event can still leave individuals overwhelmed and unable to react. Says Bec McKeown, director of human science at Immersive Labs, to CSO Online, “You may have a crisis playbook and crisis policies and you may assume those are the first things you’ll reach for during an incident. But that’s not always the case, because the way your brain works isn’t just fight or flight. It’s fight, flight, or freeze. I’ve heard people say, ‘We knew how to respond to a crisis, but we didn’t know what to do when it actually happened.’”
As such a freeze can have devastating effects for a company, giving attackers extra time to steal data, disrupt services, or otherwise cause mayhem, it’s in your best interest to both consider what can be done to minimize the chances of key members of your team freezing, and build the possibility of it happening into your response plan. Says McKeown to CSO Online, “You have to understand how you’re going to react in these times of crisis. You can develop skills in your people that can make them agile and help them react when they don’t have all the situational awareness. It’s a psychological preparation.”
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