Cyber Security in Aviation: Incident Response

In aviation, drills save lives.

Pilots and crew rehearse emergencies they may never face, because when seconds count, training beats panic. Cyber security is no different. Incident response (IR) is about preparing, practising, and executing a plan so that when an attack hits, your business knows exactly what to do.

The worst time to write an incident response plan is during an incident.

Ransomware, phishing, data leaks – they all create chaos. Without a clear plan, teams scramble, decisions get delayed, and costs skyrocket. With one, you contain the breach faster, reduce damage, and show regulators and customers you’re in control.

Think of IR as your emergency checklist. When something goes wrong mid-flight, you don’t reinvent the process, you follow a rehearsed sequence that’s been tested, trained, and refined.

Core steps of an effective incident response plan:

• Identification & reporting – make it easy for employees to raise the alarm. The faster you know, the faster you can act.
• Containment – isolate affected systems quickly (quarantine infected machines, disable compromised accounts) to prevent lateral spread.
• Investigation & eradication – work with your IT/security team or partners to understand what happened, close vulnerabilities, and remove malicious code.
• Recovery – restore from clean backups, validate systems, and bring operations back online safely.
• Post-incident review – debrief, document, and improve. In aviation, we study incidents so they don’t repeat. Cybersecurity should be no different.
• Training & drills – run tabletop exercises for leadership and simulations for teams. When people rehearse their roles, they respond faster and with less stress.

Practical advice:

• Treat cyber drills like fire drills – schedule them, run them, refine them.
• Have vendor and legal contacts on retainer, so you’re not searching for phone numbers mid-crisis.
• Pre-draft regulator and customer communication templates. Clarity and speed matter.
• Assign clear roles (who declares an incident, who leads comms, who liaises with suppliers).

In aviation, an emergency doesn’t define you – your response does. The same is true in cyber security.

Next in the series: a wrap-up post pulling the threads together, and how to build long-term resilience in aviation and beyond.