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Date: 5 August 2025
Have you read our recent monthly compilations of the biggest cyber attacks in 2025? If you so much as glance through them, you’ll know that in today’s evolving cyber threat landscape, having a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan is no longer optional. It is an essential framework for protecting your business, data, and reputation.
Cyber crime is more widespread, evolved and damaging than ever. Take the recent data breach attack at Allianz Life. The company confirmed that sensitive information of the “majority” of its 1.4 million customers was exposed in the data breach.
While the company grapples with the breach of customer trust and regulatory fallout as a result of this major compromise, credit must be given where credit is due. Allianz issued prompt notifications indicating a sophisticated incident response framework.
Prioritising investment in strong cybersecurity measures and having a robust incident response plan will not save you from a cyber attack. But it will help you manage it effectively, demonstrating your commitment to business continuity and safety of customer information to your important stakeholders.
At Cyber Management Alliance, we help organisations across the globe design, implement, and optimise robust incident response plans. We ensure that your cyber incident response plans are aligned with leading standards like NIST, ISO 27001, and EU DORA. We also help you test the effectiveness of these plans with regular cyber tabletop exercises.
These cyber drills simulate attack situations putting your team under pressure to respond and make decisions like they would in an actual crisis. These tabletop exercises clarify roles and responsibilities. They show how familiar the team is with the incident response plan and reveal any gaps in your existing plans, policies and procedures. The result? You gain confidence in your organisation’s cyber resilience capabilities and cybersecurity maturity.
But how do you create a Cyber Incident Response Plan that holds water to the nefarious cyber crime landscape of 2025? Let’s explore some expert nuances and best practices in the next few sections.
What is a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan?
First things first. What really is a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan? What should it contain and how detailed must it be? A cyber incident response plan is a formal document that outlines the processes an organisation must follow when a security incident occurs.
It is a brief, crisp guideline around which the organisation must build its response strategy.
It is a high-level document that outlines the overall strategy, roles, responsibilities, and procedures for responding to cyber incidents across an organisation. In contrast, an Incident Response Playbook is a detailed, step-by-step guide tailored to specific types of incidents (e.g., ransomware, phishing) and outlines exactly how to handle each scenario. The playbook sits under the broader plan as an operational tool.
An effective cybersecurity incident response plan helps minimise damage. It reduces recovery time and costs, and ensures business continuity over the long term. Do you want detailed insights into what the cybersecurity incident response plan must contain? Read our latest blog on Phases of a Cyber Incident Response Plan.
How to Create a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan: A Step-by-Step Approach
Creating a fit-for-purpose cyber incident response plan isn’t easy. However, by adopting a structured approach, you can ensure that your plan is tailored for your organisational risk context and will actually help your team manage the chaos that ensues a cyber attack.
In our experience, following a step-by-step process to building a robust IR plan always works. Instead of jumping straight into creating a plan, it’s best to lay a strong foundation with training and risk assessment and then work your way up.
Let’s look at some of the fundamental steps that we always advise our clients to follow when they’re looking to bolster their defences with a cyber incident response plan.
1. Invest in Incident Response Training: Before you begin writing a cybersecurity incident response plan, it is imperative that your staff understands the organisational threat landscape. They need to understand what risks your business faces and what their role is in mitigating those risks. They must also have a foundational understanding of cybersecurity incident response. Without awareness of how critical good response planning is, they will never be able to fully invest themselves in the process, leading to unsatisfactory outcomes.
Our NCSC Assured Training in cyber incident planning and response is the definitive programme for organisations looking to enhance their cyber resilience. It helps your staff understand what a cyber incident looks like, how to spot early warning signs, and what steps to take when an attack occurs.
Through real-life case studies and interactive exercises, your team will learn how to report incidents correctly, contain threats, and work together to minimise damage. The training also covers key concepts like the incident response lifecycle, roles and responsibilities, and communication during a crisis.
Most importantly, it builds awareness and confidence across your staff—so everyone knows what to do, when to act, and how to support a quick recovery.
2. Conduct a risk assessment: Conducting a cyber risk assessment before creating a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan is critical. Every business has different assets, systems, vulnerabilities, and exposure to risk. A thorough risk assessment identifies what assets need the most protection. The assets could be customer data, intellectual property, or critical infrastructure.
You’ll be able to identify where the most likely entry points for attackers may be. This insight ensures that the incident response plan is tailored and focused on the most pressing risks instead of being a generic checklist.
A risk assessment will also help you define the potential impact of various cyber incidents on your business. You can prioritise response strategies based on what incidents would be most damaging. Without this step, response efforts may be misaligned or inadequate in the face of a real threat. By starting with a well-executed risk assessment, you can lay the groundwork for a response plan that is both strategic and practical. .
3. Create the incident response plan: Once your team is trained and your cyber risks are clearly understood, the next crucial step is to document your Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan. This plan serves as the central guide for how your organisation will respond to a cyber incident, from the moment it’s detected to full recovery. The plan should outline clear roles and responsibilities for each member of the incident response team. Communication protocols and escalation procedures are critical components of an IR plan.
Your security incident response plan should be aligned with recognised frameworks like NIST SP 800-61 or ISO standards. More importantly, however, it must be customised to your organisation’s size, structure, and risk profile. Include sections on incident identification, classification of severity levels, containment strategies, eradication steps, and post-incident reviews. It’s also important to detail how incidents will be reported internally and externally.
Ultimately, this plan acts as your organisation’s guide for crisis response, enabling swift, coordinated action when it matters most. A well-structured plan ensures that everyone knows exactly what to do, reducing confusion and potential damage during a real attack.
4. Create playbooks for different threat scenarios: Once your overarching Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan is in place, the next step is to develop detailed incident response playbooks for specific types of cyber threats. While the main plan outlines the “what” and “who” of incident response, these playbooks focus on the “how” for each kind of incident. They break down complex attacks into clear, step-by-step actions tailored to scenarios like ransomware, phishing, insider threats, DDoS attacks, or data breaches. This ensures that your teams aren’t scrambling to figure out what to do when faced with different types of threats.
Incident Response Playbooks are essential because different cyber incidents require different responses. For example, handling a phishing attack might involve resetting user credentials, notifying affected parties, and running a forensic email trace.
In contrast, responding to a ransomware attack may include isolating infected systems, involving legal counsel and engaging a cyber insurance provider. These nuances must be captured clearly and actionably in separate playbooks to reduce guesswork and speed up response.
Good playbooks also include pre-written communication templates, checklists, contact lists, and decision trees to support fast and coordinated execution.
By building robust playbooks as an extension of your Incident Response Plan, you give your organisation the tactical advantage it needs to act quickly and confidently during high-pressure cyber events.
If you really want to give a major filip to your cyber resilience efforts, don’t miss our NCSC Assured Building and Optimising Incident Response Playbooks training course.
5. Test your Plan with Cyber Drills: Once your Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan and scenario-based playbooks are ready, the next critical step is to test them through cyber drills or cyber tabletop exercises. These simulated exercises are designed to mimic real-life cyber attacks in a controlled environment. This allows your team to rehearse their response without the pressure of an actual crisis.
The goal isn’t just to see if people follow the plan. These cyber drills identify gaps in processes and truly assess decision-making under stress.
Cyber drills help you evaluate how well your team understands their roles and how effectively departments coordinate during an incident. They are also a powerful way to involve senior leadership and test the strategic elements of your response. They help executive teams understand their role in crisis decision-making. This practice ensures that leaders are not making these decisions for the first time during a real breach.
By running regular cyber drills, you turn your response plan from a static document into a living, breathing defence mechanism. You build team muscle memory, increase confidence, and continuously improve your organisation’s resilience.
In fact, cyber drills are often where the most valuable lessons come from. You can then update your plan and refine your playbooks with these lessons for a stronger, faster, and more coordinated response.
Bolster Your Cyber Resilience with Cyber Management Alliance
A well-documented and tested Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan is your best defence against today’s relentless threat actors. But remember, simply having an Incident Response Plan isn’t enough.
A document that sits on a shelf or in a forgotten folder will do little to protect your business when real-world attacks strike. What truly matters is having an effective, well-tested, and regularly updated plan. It’s also imperative that your team understands and can execute key steps under pressure of a cyber incident. From training your staff to writing tailored playbooks and conducting realistic drills, every element must work together as part of a dynamic defence strategy.
This is why our clients trust Cyber Management Alliance as the definitive partner in building robust Cyber Incident Response capabilities. As the creators of the NCSC Assured Cyber Incident Planning and Response training, we are uniquely positioned to support organisations at every stage of their cyber defence journey.
Whether you’re building your first response plan, refreshing an outdated one, or looking to truly test your readiness with expert-led cyber drills, we are your trusted one-stop-shop. If you’re serious about strengthening your incident response capabilities and safeguarding your business against ever-evolving threats, it’s time to partner with the experts who lead the way in incident readiness.
Don’t wait for a breach to realise what’s missing. Proactive planning today can save your business tomorrow.
