Incident Response

“The goal is to handle the situation in a way that limits damage and reduces recovery time and costs”

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From fires to PR disasters, every organisation faces risks that it can mitigate by having incident response plans ready. We use exercises and gaming techniques to make sure that these are good enough to minimise the negative impact and that teams who will have to put them into action understand what they need to do and why.

Incidents come in a variety of categories. Some involve immediate, physical danger; floods, fire and violence all need rapid decision making and execution, often based on incomplete information. Other incident response plans will focus less on urgency and more on really understanding the situation, potential impacts and the consequences of action.

Incident Response Steps

We help organisations to mitigate risk by supporting a range of activities, using exercises to make sure that we get each stage right.

Step 1.

First, we support the drafting and testing of plans and procedures, identifying what responses and actions can be identified ahead of an incident and what approaches are required to manage the situation once it is in motion.

Step 2.

The next step is about rehearsal; making sure that everyone who will use the plan understands it and can apply any process or procedures required to make the right decisions and to make sure that nothing gets missed when stress levels are running high. Time spent on this stage can not only polish and refine the plan, but when done right can makes teams more effective through practice.

Just like a military or sports team, running drills lets people get to know each other better and builds trust and confidence. A well-run rehearsal is also a more engaging and positive way to meet compliance requirements than any mediocre box-ticking exercise.

Incident response tabletop scenarios

We can work at a variety of scales and complexity to prepare teams for incident response; tabletop scenarios provide a great way to design and develop a robust initial plan and to spark discussion across a team, but nothing beats a live rehearsal, complete with curve balls from our team, to make sure that you are as ready as you can be for a real incident.