Incident Commander/Key Responder Level 1
Blackrock 3 Partners is pleased to offer our specialized training for select BigPanda customers.*

Incident Commander/Key Responder Level 1 training is part of the Blackrock 3 Partners OnLINE Incident Management Academy, designed to give IT professionals the knowledge and skills to resolve critical IT incidents and restore systems to uptime quickly. Most of the coursework will be interactive online sessions with fellow participants, facilitated by a live instructor. You will be using incident simulations and practicing skills that are highly applicable to incident management in the IT setting. Fellow participants may be from your company or from a variety of companies and institutions around the world.
Why this course is essential for anyone in IT Operations:
This course prepares individuals to successfully perform and lead incidents to resolution using critical roles, strategies and techniques consistent with the US National Incident Management System. Course content includes:
- History of the incident management system (IMS)
- Adaptation of IMS best practices from public safety into IT
- Key roles and responsibilities of effective incident response teams:
- Incident Commander
- Command staff: Liaison officer (LNO) for communications to those outside the resolution effort and Scribe for incident documentation
- Technology subject matter experts (SMEs)
- Executives
- Other key stakeholders
- Leadership techniques and skills specific to IMS and its application in the IT world
Participants will learn:
- How to establish and maintain forward momentum during incident resolution
- Key soft skills such as establishing timelines for assigned tasks, effective strategies for asking and answering questions and managing large groups of responders
- Formatting and delivering written and verbal incident communications using the Conditions, Actions and Needs (CAN) report and IMS briefing format
- How to identify and capture key events for incident documentation and After Action reviews (AAR)
- Human behaviors and situations commonly encountered during incidents
Top five reasons to attend:
- Blackrock 3 Partners have trained thousands of responders worldwide–from foreign governments to Fortune 500 companies–and have experience leading major incidents and exercises across the United States and throughout the world.
- You may be eligible to take this course for free (normally $1,999/participant)*
- Invest in yourself–get skills and get certified
- No talking-head classes: every session is interactive with dynamic group exercises
- Easy to attend – the course is virtual and broken up into two-hour sessions, or Sprints
Evaluation criteria and grading
In the four two-hour Sprints, participants will take on leadership as Incident Commander and various command staff roles through numerous small-group exercises. Participants will be coached, observed and evaluated in the Zoom breakout rooms. Feedback is provided throughout, in both large and small group settings.
At the completion of Sprint 4, participants will engage in a final Command Staff exercise. All participants with satisfactory attendance will become eligible for the Level 1 Certification issued by Blackrock 3 Partners.
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites, but optional reading can be found in the textbook Incident Management for Operations (ISBN-13: 978-1491917626) by Rob Schnepp, Ron Vidal and Chris Hawley.
This course fulfills prerequisite requirements for enrollment in Incident Commander Level 2.
About BigPanda and Blackrock 3 Partners
BigPanda believes the IT Operations community has been underserved for years, and wants to encourage more organizations to invest in their IT Ops, NOC, DevOps and SRE teams—particularly in the area of incident management.
Blackrock 3 Partners, a world-class leader in training incident response teams, takes best practices—literally tested by fire—and translates them into the world of IT Operations. The Blackrock 3 Partners have benchmarked, trained, evaluated and exercised over 6,000 incident responders in 71 cities across 16 countries around the world. These Incident Commanders, command staff and subject matter experts (SMEs) work in global command centers, network operations centers and security operations centers as members of IT Ops, SRE, infrastructure, security, support and executive teams.
Blackrock 3 Partners courses are completely vendor neutral. There is no selling or involvement of vendors in their courses. BigPanda is not receiving any benefits or special promotions related to our scholarship program.
*Enrollment for the acclaimed Blackrock 3 Partners OnLINE Academy Level 1 training course is normally limited to employer-sponsored private group sessions, or requires a registration fee of $1,999 for individual participants in the Open Enrollment program. Through BigPanda’s partnership with Blackrock 3, you are able to register independently for the Level 1 course! BigPanda is offering scholarships to five qualified registrants who will take the course for free—no strings attached, no gimmicks.
CTA: To be enrolled in the course, please follow the instructions below:
Registration
1
Incident Commander/Key Responder Level 1 Training is part of the OnLINE Incident Management Academy, designed to give IT professionals the knowledge and skills to resolve critical IT incidents and restore systems to uptime quickly. Most of the coursework will be interactive online sessions with fellow students, facilitated by a live instructor. You will be using incident simulations and practicing skills that are highly applicable to incident management in the IT setting. Fellow students may be from your company or from a variety of companies and institutions around the world. Participants will need a webcam and a microphone, along with a reliable internet connection. In order to optimize training for all participants, we ask that each participant login from a location that has minimal background noise and is suitable for listening and actively participating in course exercises and conversations.
2
Please tell us a little about yourself. Providing some basic background information before the course starts will help us ensure you are grouped with others in your time zone, and have all the information you need prior to starting the course.