ICS Session at 2023 National CERT Conference

Today I presented my session “ICS in CERT: misunderstood and confusing? We can do better!” at the 2023 NCA CERT Conference.

Full room and great engaging audience, I had a blast!

The abstract was:
ICS, the Incident Command System is presented in the CERT curriculum in unit #2 under ‘CERT Organization’, and as a mentor for ICS for several years I have seen a lot of confused and perplexed students and volunteers. How did we get there?

In this session, we will deconstruct unit #2, rebuild it, and propose a better way to prepare CERT volunteers to effectively operate under the Incident Command System. We will go one step further in presenting ICSLand, a board game created to help CERT volunteers get a taste of what it takes to operate a command post, and even be prepared to run it themselves in special circumstances. ICSLand was presented for the first time last year at a national level. The game will be featured for attendees to play during game nights at the conference.