In an ideal world, strong security controls would prevent all cyber incidents before it ever affects the business. Even with strong cyber security measures in place, incidents still happen.
When large organisations like Marks & Spencer experience a cyber incident, it makes national headlines.
But for smaller organisations, the impact can be just as serious or even more devastating, as internal resources are usually much more limited.
A member of staff reports unusual login activity. Shared files suddenly become inaccessible. Emails stop working properly.
Systems begin to slow down as teams try to piece together what is happening behind the scenes.
At first, it might seem like a temporary technical issue. Yet, conversations quickly shift from “What’s going on?” to “How serious is this?”
While investigations are ongoing, decisions around communication, operations and next steps often need to be made quickly and under pressure.
For many organisations, this is when response plans are properly tested for the first time, or even created on the spot.
Realistic scenarios help leadership teams, IT teams and operational staff work through how the organisation would respond, communicate and make decisions under pressure.
The exercise helps organisations strengthen incident response processes, identify gaps and improve coordination, communication and decision-making across teams.
Some organisations already have incident response plans in place but have never really put them to the test.
Others have processes spread across different teams, documents or systems without a clear picture of how everything would work during a real incident.
Testing it gives organisations the opportunity to understand how the response would work in, where gaps may exist and what may need improved before a real situation unfolds.
Although cyber incidents often begin as technical problems, they quickly develop into organisation-wide issues. Leadership, operations, compliance, communications and customer-facing teams may all need to make decisions while the situation is still evolving.
The exercise helps organisations identify who needs to be involved, where responsibilities lie and how information flows across the business during an incident.
It often highlights strengths that organisations were not fully aware of beforehand, including effective communication, quick decision-making and the ability of teams to work together under pressure, while also revealing areas for improvement.
Guidance from organisations such as the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) increasingly highlights the importance of having clear incident response processes in place.
For some sectors, incident response planning is already closely tied to wider compliance requirements, including UK GDPR, NIS regulations, PCI DSS and public sector or NHS supply chain expectations.
And increasingly, expectations go beyond simply having a document sitting in a folder somewhere.
Plans are expected to be understood, maintained and tested in practice.
However, preparation is key if something unexpected does happen.
Much like business continuity planning or insurance, incident response is one of those things that becomes far more important once it’s suddenly needed.
A Cyber Incident Readiness Exercise gives organisations the opportunity to properly test their response, work through realistic scenarios and understand where gaps, assumptions or communication issues may exist before a real situation puts those processes under pressure.
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