Beyond the Checkbox: What Breaks When You Actually Stress-Test Cloud Incident Response

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Presented at fwd:cloudsec 2026 by

Matthew Harvey

Cloud incident response plans look great on paper – until you run them under pressure. This talk presents findings from dozens of cloud IR simulations conducted across multiple industries in 2025, revealing the recurring failure mode that no tool can catch. From “narrative bending” - where the teams unconsciously steer breach scenarios toward comfortable outcomes – to the discovery that most teams can’t execute their own log-query runbooks under time pressure, we expose the human and process gaps that silently erode cloud resilience. We’ll discover why in-person engagement and "psychological safety" pledges are non-negotiable for success. You’ll leave with a concrete framework for running simulations that surface real weaknesses instead of confirming comfortable assumptions.