People Over Policies, Pt. 3 — The First 24 Hours of an Incident Response

No policy survives first contact with an incident.

When a breach, outage, or ransomware alert hits, every second counts—and every assumption gets tested.
The playbooks are important, but what really matters in those first 24 hours isn’t the policy binder.
It’s the people behind it.

I still remember the morning everything went sideways.
The alerts, the messages, the adrenaline.
We had procedures—of course we did—but what carried us through wasn’t the documentation.
It was trust, teamwork, and clear communication.

Because when panic tries to take the wheel, culture takes control.
The analysts who call before they’re asked.
The engineers who verify, not assume.
The leaders who say, “We’ve got this,” and mean it.

Frameworks like NIST CSF or HITRUST guide the plan—but people drive the response.
Policies tell you what to do.
Culture determines how well you do it.

And that’s the real lesson of the first 24 hours:
Preparation matters, but connection wins.

So, to my fellow CISOs, engineers, and responders out there—
👉 What’s the first thing you do when the alarms go off?