When push comes to shove: Managing strong personalities in a cyber incident

Abstract

In a cyber crisis, who makes the decisions? The senior person? The technical expert? The self-appointed hero? In crisis leadership, removing the emotion is crucial. Human biases, office politics and perceived personal fears often influence or delay sound decision making. The difference between a controlled event and a business-disrupting incident is your ability to harness these human factors to share expertise and ensure personal benefit does not trump organisational objections. In this paper, a select list of common cyber crisis characters is considered, human biases are explored and leadership and learning models are considered to help navigate the pitfalls of the human element in cyber incidents.