When disaster strikes in the cyber world, effective crisis management can make the difference between rapid recovery and prolonged chaos. This is where Tiger Teams—expert groups assigned to solve technical and systemic problems—step in as the heroes of the hour. Born out of critical missions in aerospace and engineering, their structured approach and rapid problem-solving have made them indispensable in technology crisis scenarios, particularly for managing major incidents that severely impact business operations.

To elevate the impact of Tiger Teams, I propose the Hexagon Tiger Team Framework, a structured approach comprising six specialised teams: Echo, Delta, Romeo, Whisky, Bravo, and Alpha. This framework ensures every aspect of a major incident, from escalation to post-mortem analysis, is covered with precision and expertise.

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A Brief History of Tiger Teams

The concept of Tiger Teams dates back to pre-World War II, but it gained prominence during the early years of space exploration. A landmark success was their role in solving navigation errors in the Apollo space program, where the discovery of lunar mass concentrations (mascons) refined calculations and improved landing accuracy.

Perhaps the most famous example of Tiger Teams in action was during the Apollo 13 mission. Faced with life-threatening challenges—including limited air supply, depleted power, and crippled navigation systems—Tiger Teams engineered creative solutions to bring the crew home safely. Their mantra, "Failure is not an option," remains a guiding principle for problem-solvers everywhere.

In cyber, Tiger Teams have evolved to address crises ranging from data breaches to catastrophic outages. Let’s explore how the Hexagon Tiger Team Framework can revolutionise cyber crisis management.

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The Hexagon Tiger Team Framework

1. Echo Team | The Escalation & Coordination Team

The Echo Team owns the major incident from start to finish, much like a Flight Director in Mission Control. They are the communication bridge between stakeholders—service desks, executives, customers, and other IT teams.

• Responsibilities:

  • Establish clear communication channels.

  • Manage stakeholder expectations in line with SLAs.

  • Provide a single source of truth for incident updates.

• Key to Success:

  • A strong Incident Commander who can remain calm under pressure, ensure information flow, and coordinate team efforts.

2. Delta Team | The Diagnostics Experts

The Delta Team focuses on identifying the root cause of the incident. Their expertise lies in both proactive detection and reactive diagnostics.

• Responsibilities:

  • Map impacted components to the CMDB for accurate diagnostics.

  • Investigate immediate, proximate, and systemic causes.

  • Develop and deliver candidate fixes.

• Key to Success:

  • Advanced tooling for root cause analysis and an in-depth understanding of the infrastructure.

3. Romeo Team | The Repair & Recovery Team

The Romeo Team executes repairs and ensures the impacted components are restored to their baseline configurations.

• Responsibilities:

  • Implement repairs based on Delta Team diagnostics.

  • Coordinate logistics for component replacement or repair.

  • Ensure systems are restored to normal operations.

• Key to Success:

  • Strict adherence to SOPs and an agile approach to problem-solving.

4. Whisky Team | The Workaround Wizards

The Whisky Team is the first line of defence to minimise business impact. Their goal is to implement temporary solutions that restore partial functionality while permanent fixes are developed.

• Responsibilities:

  • Deploy known or alternative workarounds.

  • Communicate workaround implications to the Echo Team.

• Key to Success:

  • Creativity and quick thinking, especially when no pre-existing workarounds are available.

5. Bravo Team | The Business Continuity Team

The Bravo Team focuses on resuming business operations when all else fails, often by activating disaster recovery (DR) plans.

• Responsibilities:

  • Execute DR plans, including failovers to alternate locations.

  • Collaborate with Whisky Team for short-term continuity measures.

• Key to Success:

  • Seamless integration of DR plans into overall incident response strategies.

6. Alpha Team | The Post-Incident Analysts

The Alpha Team ensures that no lesson goes unlearned. Their role is to document the incident, analyse its causes, and recommend future improvements.

• Responsibilities:

  • Conduct a comprehensive post-mortem analysis.

  • Assess the incident’s business impact and compare it to historical data.

  • Recommend systemic changes to prevent recurrence.

• Key to Success:

  • Honest, data-driven analysis and actionable recommendations.

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Adding Rapid Risk Assessments

An effective addition to the Hexagon Tiger Team Framework is the Rapid Risk Assessment (RRA) tool. This tool allows teams to quickly evaluate threats, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures during an incident.

• Benefits:

  • Faster identification of mitigation strategies.

  • Enhanced decision-making during high-pressure situations.

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Why Hexagon Tiger Teams Are Game-Changing

1. Specialisation & Focus:
   Each team is tailored to handle a specific aspect of the incident, ensuring expertise and efficiency.

2. Integrated Communication:
   The Echo Team acts as the nerve centre, ensuring all stakeholders are aligned and informed.

3. Business Resilience:
   With dedicated teams for diagnostics, workarounds, and continuity, organisations can minimise downtime and financial losses.

4. Continuous Improvement:
   The Alpha Team’s insights lead to stronger, more resilient systems over time.

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The People Factor

Technology and processes alone can’t solve major incidents. The true power of the Hexagon Tiger Team Framework lies in its people. With clear roles, specialised skills, and effective coordination, these teams bring order to chaos and turn crises into opportunities for improvement.

In the high-stakes world of IT crisis management, Hexagon Tiger Teams are more than a strategy—they’re a lifeline.

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Hexagon Tiger Teams | A Natural Fit for Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity aficionados often organise their response frameworks around specialised teams like Red, Blue, and Purple Teams. While these structures have proven effective in tackling cybersecurity incidents, the reality is that every technology-related problem or outage shares common traits in causation and impact. Whether it’s a security breach, system failure, or service disruption, the Four P’s—People, Processes, Products, and Partners—are always involved, and the consequences manifest as loss, errors, or failures.

The Hexagon Tiger Teams approach naturally extends and enhances the cybersecurity paradigm by offering a structured, cross-functional methodology for resolving incidents. This structure ensures that skills from diverse technical and operational domains can be harnessed to resolve problems effectively, even when they involve highly technical or siloed challenges.

Bridging Cybersecurity & Technology Problem Management

Nasrumminallah Zeeshan, in his article "17 Tips for a Successful Red Team" on Peerlyst, describes the triad of cybersecurity teams—Red, Blue, and Purple—and their specific roles:

• Red Teams test an organisation's defences by simulating attacker tactics.

• Blue Teams defend against real attackers and Red Teams by monitoring and responding to threats in real time.

• Purple Teams act as a bridge, analysing both Red and Blue Team actions to refine and enhance overall cybersecurity strategy.

While these roles address the technical nuances of cybersecurity, they align perfectly with the Hexagon Tiger Teams framework when viewed through the broader lens of technology problem management.

Aligning the Hexagon Tiger Teams with Cybersecurity Teams

1. Echo Team → Incident Command and Communications
   The Echo Team’s role mirrors that of a Purple Team, managing stakeholder communications, integrating input from all technical teams, and ensuring alignment across silos. In cybersecurity, this team would coordinate Red and Blue Team efforts, ensuring clear communication with executives and stakeholders.

2. Delta Team → Diagnostics & Investigation
   Similar to a Red Team, the Delta Team investigates the root cause of incidents. Whether it’s analysing a failed patch or identifying a zero-day exploit, this team’s primary objective is to pinpoint vulnerabilities and propose candidate fixes.

3. Romeo Team → Repair & Recovery
   The Romeo Team embodies the operational aspects of a Blue Team, tasked with restoring systems to functionality. They focus on repairing compromised systems and restoring normal business operations following the recommendations of the Delta Team.

4. Whisky Team → Workarounds
   Acting as a real-time support mechanism, the Whisky Team complements the Blue Team by implementing temporary fixes that mitigate immediate risks while a permanent solution is developed. This ensures business continuity even under severe threat scenarios.

5. Bravo Team → Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery
   The Bravo Team takes a strategic view, planning and implementing full-scale continuity measures. For cybersecurity incidents, this might include activating failover systems, moving operations to backup locations, or deploying alternative resources to mitigate business impact.

6. Alpha Team → Post-Mortem & Analysis
   Like a Purple Team, the Alpha Team conducts a comprehensive post-incident review. This team’s analysis feeds back into the organisation’s cybersecurity strategy, ensuring lessons learned from the incident are applied to improve future resilience.

Building Resilience Across Silos

The Hexagon Tiger Teams framework transcends traditional siloed approaches to problem management. By leveraging its structure, organisations can adopt a cohesive strategy that integrates cybersecurity into broader technology crisis management. The shared focus on technical expertise, real-time decision-making, and cross-functional collaboration ensures that the same methodologies used to defend against cyber threats can also address broader technological outages and failures.

Ultimately, the Hexagon Tiger Teams approach not only aligns with the principles of cybersecurity but enhances them, providing a robust and scalable model for managing crises across the technological landscape. Whether dealing with a ransomware attack or a catastrophic system failure, the principles of these teams remain the same—structured collaboration, technical precision, and relentless focus on resolution.

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The above concepts are the underlying components of a Fusion Centre:

The Internet of Things (IoT) plays a major part of optimizing operations:

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Ronald Bartels provides solutions to networking and last mile reliability problems. The solution from Fusion Broadband allows a business to stay 100% connected, avoid downtime and keep working.

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