Incidents don’t wait. They hit production, disrupt users, and pull teams into long recovery cycles.
And a well-structured incident response team helps you move fast, limit damage, and restore services without chaos.
In this blog, we’ll explain what an incident response team is, its key functions, team composition, and different types of teams.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
What is an Incident Response Team (IRT)?
An incident response team (IRT) is a group that handles security incidents, system failures, and high-risk outages.
The team’s goal is simple: detect issues early, respond with a plan, and recover before customers experience downtime or service disruptions.
An IRT helps by creating a clear workflow for detection, containment, communication, and recovery. It removes the guesswork during outages and gives your team a repeatable way to handle incidents.
Examples of Incident Response Team
A payments platform deploys a new build that updates the webhook signature validation service. Minutes later, merchants report signature mismatch errors, and their order flows pause. Alerts fire in the on-call channel.
The Incident Commander steps in. One engineer checks the code diff in the signature logic. Another checks IAM logs to confirm there’s no unauthorized access. Security analysts compare failing requests and find the cause: the new build dropped support for an older HMAC format that many merchants still use.
Infra engineers roll back the service, clear stale cache entries, and watch the verify-webhook endpoint. Error rates fall, and merchant traffic returns to normal.
The team adds tests for both HMAC formats and updates the deployment checklist.
Key Functions And Responsibilities
1. Preparation
Preparation covers everything before an incident hits. The team writes the response plan, sets alert routes, reviews risks, and builds playbooks for common incidents. This step matters because unplanned responses slow everything down. A simple plan avoids panic and gives people clear direction.
2. Detection and Analysis
Teams watch networks and logs for unusual activity. When an alert triggers, analysts confirm if it is a real incident. They check the impact, identify the source, and start forensic analysis.
3. Response and Containment
Response is the moment the incident becomes real. The team validates the issue, isolates affected systems, and works to stop the spread. This phase matters because fast containment reduces downtime and limits service degradation.
4. Recovery
Recovery brings systems back to a stable state. The team patches affected components, restores backups, rebuilds hosts, or reverts faulty deployments.
Recovery matters because users depend on fast restoration. The goal is to return services without introducing new failures.
5. Communication
Communication happens across all phases. The team updates internal members, leadership, and sometimes customers. They share what failed, what is happening now, and what will happen next. Clear communication avoids duplication of work and keeps everyone aligned.
6. Post-Incident Review
Once the incident is over, the IRT reviews what happened. They identify what worked, what failed, and what to change. They update their incident response plan and tools to close the gaps.
Team Composition: Incident Response Team Structure
| Role | Responsibility | Where They Are Involved |
| On-Call Engineer | First responder. Validates alerts and tries initial fixes. | At the start of every alert. During the early investigation. |
| Incident Commander | Leads the response. Sets priorities and coordinates teams. | Throughout the incident |
| Communications Lead | Shares updates with teams, leadership, and customers. | Throughout the incident |
| Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) | Provide deep technical expertise and apply fixes. | When the incident needs domain-level knowledge. |
| Stakeholders | Give direction on business, compliance, and customer impact. | During major incidents or when decisions affect the business. |
An Incident Response Team works best when multiple skills come together. Each role focuses on a specific part of the response.
On-Call Engineer
The on-call engineer is the first person who sees the alert. They open the logs, confirm the issue, and try the quick fixes listed in the playbook. If the problem needs more depth or touches a critical path, they pull in specialists.
This role drives fast detection. It sets the direction for the rest of the response.
Incident Commander
The Incident Commander takes charge when the issue becomes serious and continues to stay active throughout the incident. They open the incident channel, gather the right people, and set priorities. They make sure the team stays focused and avoids extra noise.
This role brings structure to high-pressure situations and keeps the response aligned.
Communications Lead
The Communications Lead handles updates during the incident. They talk to engineers, gather accurate details, and share them with internal teams and leadership. When the issue affects customers, they prepare clear updates for them as well.
This role keeps communication steady without distracting the technical teams.
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
SMEs join when the incident touches a specific domain. They may be experts in cloud infrastructure, APIs, networking, or databases. They identify root causes, propose fixes, and confirm stability after changes.
This role adds the depth needed to solve complex issues safely.
Stakeholders
Stakeholders include executives, legal, HR, and other business leaders. They join major incidents that affect customers, compliance, or revenue. They give direction, approve sensitive actions, and decide how the business should respond.
They are not responders, but their input shapes the final decisions.
Types of Incident Response Teams
Incident Response Teams are built in different ways. The structure depends on your stack, team size, and how often you deal with incidents. Most teams fall into a few common models.
By focus
Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT): A CSIRT handles security incidents, data breaches, and attack attempts. They focus on fast investigation and containment when something suspicious hits your systems. Many organisations use this as their primary security response team.
Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT): A CERT works on threats, vulnerabilities, and large-scale security issues. CERT and CSIRT often overlap, but CERT teams sometimes support wider communities or industry groups, not just internal systems.
Security Operations Center (SOC): A SOC runs continuous monitoring, detection, and analysis. They watch logs, alerts, and threat signals. When something looks serious, the SOC hands it over to the Incident Response Team or works with them directly.
By structure
Centralized: One dedicated group handles all incidents across the company. This works well for smaller teams or unified platforms.
Distributed: Response is split across teams or regions. Each group handles incidents in its own environment. This model fits large companies with many services.
Coordinated: A central team acts as the command center. Distributed teams handle the hands-on response. The central group provides guidance, tooling, and consistency.
Other models
Internal: Your own engineering, security, and operations staff form the full team.
External: A vendor handles incidents when things go wrong. Many companies use MSSPs for this.
Hybrid: Internal teams run day-to-day response, and external specialists step in for complex security events or scale-heavy situations.
How to Build an Effective Incident Response Team
Here is how to create or refine your own IRT practically.
1. Define Clear Roles
Clearly documented incident response team roles and responsibilities prevent confusion during critical moments. Avoid overlapping tasks and keep decision paths simple.
2. Pick People With the Right Skills
Choose responders who understand your systems and work well under pressure. Mix generalists and specialists so the team can handle different problems.
3. Create a Simple Operating Model
Write a short guide that explains how the team works. Include triggers, communication flow, and leadership. Keep it easy to follow.
4. Give the Team the Right Tools
Set up escalations, on-call schedules, alert routing, and playbooks. Tools like Spike provide all these features and help manage incidents better.
5. Run Regular Drills
Practice common scenarios like database outages or credential leaks. Treat these like real incidents to test coordination. Review performance after each drill.
6. Review and Improve the Team
Check what slowed the team after incidents or drills. Update roles and runbooks. Adjust the team as systems grow or responsibilities change.
FAQs
Q. What is the role of an incident response team?
An incident response team detects, analyzes, and resolves incidents to reduce downtime, data loss, and business impact.
Q. What is IRT in cybersecurity?
In cybersecurity, an IRT is a dedicated group that manages, contains, and recovers from threats like malware, data breaches, or intrusions.
Q. What is the ERT team?
An Emergency Response Team (ERT) handles critical events such as infrastructure failures, outages, or disasters that impact business continuity and safety.
Q. What are P1, P2, and P3 incidents?
They define incident priority levels: P1 is a critical and customer-facing incident, P2 is a major but controlled incident, and P3 is a minor incident with limited user impact.
Q. What are incident response team models?
Centralized: One core team responds to every incident. Best for smaller companies or a single shared platform.
Distributed: Individual teams handle incidents in their own services. Works for large systems with clear ownership boundaries.Hybrid: A central group coordinates the response, and local teams handle the fixes. Useful when infrastructure is spread across many teams.
Conclusion
Without an incident response team, small issues turn into outages that slow the entire company.
But with the right team in place, you act quickly, reduce noise, and restore services before users are affected.
The Incident Response Team enables your organization to have a clear process to follow during pressure, so teams don’t guess their way through a crisis.
Next Read
A strong incident response needs clear leadership. During pressure, the person running the response sets the pace, the direction, and the outcome.
If you want to go deeper into this role, read our blog on the Incident Commander. It explains how they lead the response and why every high-severity incident depends on them.