If your business relies on technology, security incidents are inevitable. And all businesses rely on technology. That’s why a comprehensive, up-to-date incident readiness plan is essential. But incident response readiness isn’t something you can buy—it’s something you need to build, refine, and integrate into your organization’s culture.

Some executives hesitate, viewing preparedness efforts as disruptive and expensive. That’s true. But effective incident readiness doesn’t just prepare you for the next breach—it strengthens your ability to handle every incident, reducing costs, minimizing damage, and improving response efficiency over time.

Incident Readiness Pays Off

The more incidents you handle effectively, the less disruptive and expensive each one becomes. A strong response plan:

• Reduces financial impact by limiting downtime, legal exposure, and regulatory penalties

• Preserves customer trust and brand reputation through transparent, well-managed communications

• Improves response efficiency by ensuring teams know their roles and can act quickly

• Strengthens organizational resilience, so incidents don’t derail business operations

Poor Incident Handling Is Costly

The worst security incidents—those that cause the most financial damage, longest recovery times, costly lawsuits, and regulatory scrutiny—happen when companies haven’t prepared properly. Without a structured response plan, teams react in isolation, communication breaks down, and critical decisions take too long, compounding the damage.

Key Questions to Assess Your Incident Readiness

An effective response strategy starts with asking the right questions. These guide policy, procedures, and response playbooks, ensuring your organization is prepared when—not if—an incident occurs.

• Has your legal team trained for security incidents, and do they know how to review incident-related plans, communications, and regulatory actions?

• Have you identified a Core Incident Response Team with decision-makers from engineering, IT, security, legal, communications, operations, and executive leadership?

• Do you have an incident response firm on retainer, and how often do you engage with them?

• Have you developed a security communications strategy that defines how to communicate internally, to customers, and publicly in alignment with company values?

• Do you have policies, procedures, and runbooks that cover not just incident response but also post-incident actions beyond root cause analysis?

• Have you tested your response plan? If so, when was the last time?

Building a Roadmap to Readiness

Incident readiness requires ongoing assessment, testing, and refinement. A structured approach ensures your organization stays ahead of emerging threats and is equipped to respond confidently when incidents occur.

• Your readiness roadmap should include:

• Assessment of current policies and resources allocated for incident response

• Evaluation of out-of-band communication and networking strategies to maintain operations during disruptions

• Review of internal and external security communication plans, roles, and incident command structure

• Analysis of security settings on key systems to ensure operational resilience during an incident

• Regular tabletop exercises (TTX) with post-exercise action reports

These activities should be conducted at least quarterly to keep your response plan relevant and effective.

EPSD Can Help

We specialize in incident readiness strategy and execution, helping organizations build resilient, well-practiced response teams. If you’re ready to strengthen your security posture, contact us today to start your readiness assessment.