In an increasingly volatile cyber threat landscape, Cyber Incident Planning and Response is no longer just the responsibility of the IT department. It’s a critical function that every modern organisation must take seriously.
Given the spate of recent cyber attacks shaking even the most well-resourced institutions, including leading UK retailers and crypto giant Coinbase, the importance of a mature and tested incident response strategy has never been clearer.
While nothing can guarantee complete protection from cyber attacks, a mature Cyber Incident Response Plan can help you mitigate the damage to a large extent. It can also ensure that your business operations bounce back as quickly as possible. This is especially significant given how long one of the UK retailers, recently attacked, took to resume regular operations.
Further, a strong cyber resilience strategy ensures that you remain compliant with regulatory obligations in the face of a cybersecurity incident. This can save you thousands of dollars in penalties and fines. It will also save your business reputation that you’ve so painstakingly built over the years.
You now have a good understanding of why building a robust Incident Response Plan and strategy is critical in 2025. It’s absolutely essential for containing cyber threats and limiting damage.
But achieving provable cyber resilience isn’t easy. Your Cyber Incident Response Plan should work to effectively manage a crisis in real time. It should also align with regulatory expectations and industry best practices.
Below are some of the critical steps that you must follow to build cyber resilience and readiness against the current evolving threats.
A strategy is only as strong as the people implementing it. Begin by investing in high-quality training for your IT, cybersecurity, legal, HR, and communications teams. Cyber incidents affect the entire organisation, and every team must know their role during a crisis.
Enrol staff in our NCSC Assured Cyber Incident Planning & Response Training. The course is delivered by one of the world's top trainers in Incident Planning and Response. Participants don’t just learn theory. They engage in interactive, real-world simulations based on actual cyber attacks. These hands-on scenarios help your team to understand how to respond under pressure and communicate effectively. They also learn the importance of making fast and informed decisions during a cyber crisis.
Unlike many technical-only courses, our training is tailored for a broad audience. Participants from IT, InfoSec, HR, Legal, PR, Compliance, and Executive Leadership can attend the training course. This helps break down organisational silos. It also fosters a coordinated, organisation-wide response during incidents. You walk away with customisable templates, actionable checklists, and expert guidance you can immediately apply within your organisation. The training empowers your team to assess and improve existing plans, and elevate overall cyber resilience.
The course covers every critical aspect of incident response, including:
A well-documented and tailored Incident Response Plan is the foundation of a successful cybersecurity strategy. It should cover all possible scenarios and clearly outline actions to be taken in the event of an attack. The plan should be fluff-free and stick to just the most important steps that all key stakeholders can understand and implement.
You can use our professionally designed and expert-created Cyber Incident Response Plan template. This template is completely customisable to your organisational threat context. It will help you define incident types and severity levels. Using the template will also allow you to ensure that your plan aligns with regulatory frameworks like NIST CSF, ISO 27001, and EU DORA.
Our template includes:
Remember that you also need to complement the plan with scenario-specific Incident Response playbooks.
An untested Incident Response Plan is like a fire drill where no one knows where the exits are—or worse, they’re all locked. You don’t want to discover during a five-alarm blaze that the fire extinguisher is just a prop.
Much like emergency response in a building, cyber incident response requires muscle memory, coordination, and clarity under pressure. If your teams have never practiced what to do during a cyber attack, even the most detailed plans will fall apart in the chaos of a real cyber attack. This is where Cyber Tabletop Exercises come in. They’re your rehearsal before the actual show—helping you identify broken processes and bottlenecks.
Cyber Drills allow you to simulate attacks in a safe environment without disrupting operations. They test decision-making in real-time, and help you refine your response based on lessons learned.
In the middle of a cyber crisis, you don’t rise to the level of your plan—you fall to the level of your practice. So test your Incident Response Plans and processes at least twice a year, tweak them, and work on them like your business depends on it—because it probably does.
But also remember, that your cyber drills must be based on realistic scenarios that are relevant to your business, your industry and your most precious assets. Use our Top 30 Cyber Drill Scenarios document for inspiration.
The cyber threat landscape in 2025 is more aggressive and unpredictable than ever before. As we’ve seen in the examples discussed earlier, the difference between those who recover quickly and those who suffer long-term damage often comes down to preparation and speed of response.
That’s why Cyber Incident Planning and Response must be prioritised at the highest levels of leadership. It can no longer be treated just as a compliance checkbox.
The Golden Hour of a cyber attack is your organisation’s one shot at minimising impact. Miss it, and the cost can be catastrophic—financially, legally, and reputationally.
This is why more and more businesses across sectors are turning to our NCSC Assured Cyber Incident Planning & Response Training. It provides you with a proven framework for empowering your teams and transforming theory into real-world capability. With our training, templates, and cyber drill resources, you’ll gain the confidence that your teams are ready for any threat—before it strikes.