Incident Response Readiness Program
For organizations that need to show — to a board, a customer or a cyber insurer — that they are ready for an incident, without paying for a full response retainer. The program builds or refreshes the incident response plan, runs a tabletop every year, keeps contact trees and playbooks current, and holds prepaid responder hours that convert to proactive work if unused. It is the step below the Incident Response Retainer, which adds contractual response SLAs.
In scope
- Incident response plan build or refresh
- Annual tabletop exercise with leadership
- Ransomware and business email compromise playbooks
- Prepaid responder hours (convertible to proactive work)
- Quarterly readiness check-in and contact-tree upkeep
You receive
- Incident response plan and playbooks
- Annual tabletop after-action report
- Insurer / customer-ready readiness attestation letter
- Quarterly readiness report
Tiers
Choose the depth.
Essential IR Readiness
$1.5K / mo
IR plan build or refresh, one leadership tabletop a year, two playbooks and 10 prepaid responder hours a year. For organizations up to 250 employees and a single site team.
- employees
- 250
- Objectives
- 1
- hours
- 10
Advanced IR Readiness
$4.5K / mo
Adds quarterly check-ins, five playbooks, 40 prepaid hours per year and next-business-day responder access
- employees
- 1000
- Objectives
- 1
- hours
- 40
Enterprise IR Readiness
$9.5K / mo
Adds two tabletops a year (technical and executive), 100 prepaid hours, forensic-readiness review and priority access to the response team
- employees
- 5000
- Objectives
- 2
- hours
- 100
Members: engagement coupons from the CISO Marketplace coupon book apply to services. There is no blanket discount.
What's inside this engagement
Phase by phase.
How a continuous / subscription service engagement runs, what happens in each phase and what you see. Exact scope, tier and timeline are fixed in your proposal and SOW.
01Onboarding
Scope, integrations, access and escalation paths set up.
You see · Access and contacts.
02Baseline
An initial assessment establishes where you are before continuous work starts.
You see · The baseline report.
03Continuous operation
The service runs to the agreed scope, with findings delivered as they are confirmed.
You see · Findings in the portal as they land.
04Periodic review
Regular reporting on trends, open items and what changed.
You see · A standing review with your team.
Commercials
From first call to final report.
- 01
Scoping call
A practitioner, not a salesperson, walks through targets, constraints and what a good outcome looks like for you.
- 02
Proposal & rules of engagement
A fixed-scope proposal with tier, price and deliverables. Rules of engagement, contacts and out-of-bounds systems are agreed in writing.
- 03
Sign, then start
MSA and SOW are signed electronically and the deposit is paid. Only then does testing begin.
- 04
Execution
Testing runs to the agreed plan. Critical findings are escalated as they are found; you don't wait for the report.
- 05
Report & debrief
An executive summary plus technical findings with evidence, reproduction steps and fixes, walked through with your team.
- 06
Retest
Where the tier includes it, we verify your fixes and reissue the report, so auditors and customers see the issues closed.
Timelines are set per engagement in the SOW.
Related
Incident Response Readiness & Tabletop Exercise
Comprehensive incident response assessment and tabletop exercise designed to validate your organization's IR preparedness through focused policy review, stakeholder coordination validation, and scenario-based team exercises. Our specialized approach combines industry-standard IR maturity assessment with practical tabletop simulations to enhance your incident response capabilities, team coordination, and regulatory compliance readiness.
SOC Maturity & Incident Response Assessment
Comprehensive evaluation of your organization's Security Operations Center (SOC) capabilities and incident response readiness. Our assessment examines detection coverage, response procedures, team capabilities, and technology effectiveness to identify gaps in your security operations and provide a roadmap for enhanced threat detection and response capabilities.
Advanced Threat Hunting Program
Proactive threat hunting service combining machine learning, behavioral analytics, and expert analysis to identify sophisticated threats and establish continuous hunting capabilities.
Research
Latest from the blog

risk-management · Sep 23, 2026
Three Linux Kernel Flaws Hit CISA's KEV List: A CISO Triage Playbook
CISA added three actively exploited Linux kernel CVEs to its KEV catalog with a 72-hour federal remediation window. Here is a step-by-step triage order for CISOs.

incident-response · Sep 22, 2026
The Revolut Breach Is a Case Study in Confusing Authentication With Authorization
Revolut disclosed customer data to attackers who spoofed a government agency's email domain for five months. The root cause was not weak email security but a workflow that treated a valid domain as proof of a valid request.

incident-response · Sep 16, 2026
Root RCE Zero-Day in Cisco Secure Email Gateway Under Active Exploitation
A critical, unauthenticated root RCE flaw in Cisco Secure Email Gateway is under active exploitation, added to CISA's KEV catalog with a September 17 federal deadline.
Start an engagement