When Seconds Count: Why Every Organisation Needs a Cyber Incident Response Plan

If a fire alarm goes off in your building, everyone knows what to do. You’ve rehearsed it, it’s documented, and it’s drilled into company culture…

Now imagine the same urgency - but instead of flames, it’s ransomware encrypting your systems, leaking customer data, and locking you out of your own business. The truth is, while most organisations have a clear fire safety policy, far fewer have a consistent cyber incident response plan.

In fact, recent research shows that 77% of organisations lack a cohesive incident response strategy. And when cybercriminals strike (often without warning) those first few hours can determine whether a company recovers or collapses. Cyber security is no longer the sole responsibility of IT. It's a board-level governance issue; one that requires preparation, coordination, and leadership at the highest levels.

The High Stakes of Poor Preparation

For businesses across every sector and size, the cost of a cyber incident is rising - not just in financial terms, but reputational, operational, and regulatory as well. While large enterprises may have technical teams on hand, they often struggle with clarity over who makes what decisions during a crisis. Smaller businesses, on the other hand, may assume they are too insignificant to be targeted. Until it’s too late.

The reality is simple: what you do before a cyber incident largely determines how well you respond during one.

Having a defined and rehearsed incident response plan is more than just a technical protocol, it’s a critical risk management tool. Without it, even minor breaches can spiral into catastrophic business events, costing businesses both financially and reputationally.

What Does an Effective Incident Response Plan Look Like?

A robust incident response plan provides a structured, step-by-step roadmap for managing cyber incidents.

It is built around clear roles, decision points, communication strategies, and technical escalation paths. Importantly, it must be tailored to your organisation’s size, sector, and operational realities.

Key characteristics of a strong plan include:

• Defined leadership roles and authority chains

• Pre-approved response procedures for different types of threats

• Communication frameworks for internal stakeholders, regulators, and customers

• Technical playbooks for isolation, containment, and recovery

• Regular simulation exercises to test the plan’s effectiveness

At PureCyber, our senior incident response specialists Jon Stock (Chief Information Risk Officer) and Matt Jones (Chief Defence Security Officer) stress the need for more than just documentation. “A plan is only as good as your ability to follow it under pressure,” Stock explains. “Simulation exercises are essential to make that possible.”

Crisis Leadership: Who’s in the Room, and What Do They Do?

When a cyber incident unfolds, there is no time to work out who’s in charge. An effective response hinges on getting the right people in the room…fast. Ensuring they understand their roles.

Typically, your response team should include:

- CISO or IT Lead - managing technical containment and recovery

- Legal Counsel - advising on regulatory obligations and liability

- Communications Lead - shaping messaging to staff, customers, media

- HR or People Officer - supporting internal communication and wellbeing

- CEO or Board Delegate - making critical go/no-go decisions, including potential law enforcement involvement

The most important questions that leadership need to be addressing are as follows:

• Has the threat been contained, or is it spreading?

• Should we notify the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)?

• Do we need to shut down customer-facing services?

• What do we tell our staff and clients - and when?

The faster these questions are answered, the faster you can move from chaos to containment.

PureCyber Incident Response Simulations - The First Critical Hours

PureCyber runs real-time incident response simulations, walking executives through the first critical hours of a breach using a realistic timeline.

As an assured NCSC Cyber Incident Exercise (CIE) provider, our consultancy services offer guidance and support in improving businesses’ cyber security policies, achieving accreditations, auditing posture and approach, reaching compliance standards, adhering to client frameworks, and implementing strong processes.

We offer two approaches to cyber incident response simulation:

• Table-Top Simulations: Discussion-based simulations, focused on roles, responsibilities, activities, and key decision points in line with your organisations existing incident response plan

• Live-Play Simulations: Real-time sessions where participants execute their roles in response to a particular scenario.

These exercises often reveal the same gaps across organisations: confusion about roles, delays in authorisation, conflicting communication, and untested technical procedures.

By embedding this scenario-based training into regular governance routines, companies can transform an abstract policy into a lived, reflexive process.

The Board’s Role in Cyber Resilience

The board's responsibility begins months before crisis point is reached, with strategic oversight of the organisation’s preparedness being key to ensuring a successful incident response.

Senior leaders must ensure their teams have:

• An incident response policy aligned with national and sector-specific regulations

• Regular testing of technical and human elements

• Budget for training, monitoring tools, and threat intelligence

• Clearly documented decision-making frameworks under pressure

Cyber security isn’t a purely operational matter; it's a strategic risk issue, much like supply chain fragility or financial compliance. The board must treat it accordingly - asking tough questions, demanding simulations, and allocating the resources needed to protect the organisation’s future.

Bringing It All Together: Embedding Resilience

Creating a good incident response plan isn’t a one-off project. Continuous improvement of its coverage and implementation will ensure the best possible outcomes in the event of a cyber attack. The organisations that fare best are those that treat incident response as a core pillar of corporate governance, and not just a checkbox exercise.

This includes:

• Quarterly tabletop exercises with senior decision-makers

• Annual policy reviews with legal and compliance leads

• Regular scenario training for frontline technical and comms teams

• Third-party validation through red teaming and simulation partners

Resilience Begins Before the Breach

When it comes to cyber incidents, hope is not a strategy.

The cyber threat landscape is a continuously evolving field of risk, and combined with the growing complexity of organisational networks, you can no longer ask yourself if your organisation will be targeted but try to assess when an attack is likely to strike or at the very least, be prepared when it does.

A well-designed and consistently rehearsed incident response plan forms the backbone of organisational resilience. It ensures that when a breach occurs - whether through ransomware, insider compromise, or third-party exposure, your teams know exactly what to do, who to inform, and how to act in a way that minimises damage and accelerates recovery.

A mature response strategy brings clarity, confidence and control to what can otherwise be a chaotic and high-stakes environment.

But incident response planning must go beyond documentation. It must become part of the organisational culture - embedded in leadership behaviours and drilled into operational routines. By bringing key decision-makers into simulation scenarios and empowering them with the knowledge and authority to act decisively, businesses can replace panic with precision.

The question every organisation should be asking itself today is simple but urgent:
When the cyber alarm sounds, will you respond with chaos - or with confidence?

Is Your Cyber Security Stressing You Out in 2025?

PureCyber Has All The Resources You Need to Stay One Step Ahead.

From free online webinars in our Autumn Webinar Series, to AI threats, essential checklists and landscape reports, we’ve got you covered.

Discover expert-curated insights, tools, and resources to strengthen your organisation’s cyber resilience during the busiest season for attacks. The first webinar in our Autumn Series, Crisis Unfolding: Why Leaders Must Own Incident Response will walk you through the first critical few hours of a cyber incident using a realistic timeline - revealing exactly what you need to know to create an effective incident response plan.

You can explore further details about our Autumn Webinar Series by clicking the button below - three live, consecutive, monthly webinars covering cyber security from different perspectives and led by our expert team of cyber specialists.

How Can PureCyber Help?

The PureCyber team are here to take over the burden of your cyber security and ensure your organisation’s data remains secure and well managed, with proactive monitoring and real-time threat intelligence - providing you with a comprehensive and reliable cyber department to support you in all aspects of your security efforts, including: 24/7 Security Operations Centre (SOC) services, Managed Detection & Response (MDR/EDR),Threat Exposure Management (TEM) & Brand Protection Services & Penetration Testing.

PureCyber is recognised as an Assured Service Provider by the NCSC to offer governance and compliance consultancy services/audits. Contact our team of compliance experts to enquire about our full range of Governance Support - including Cyber Essentials, ISO 27001, FISMA, SOC1 and SOC2 standards.

Get in touch or book a demo for more information on our services and how we can safeguard your organisation with our expert cyber security solutions.

Email: info@purecyber.com Call: 0800 368 9397