Incident Response
Readiness
Prepare before a cyber incident occurs. A strong incident response capability is more than having a document saved somewhere - your team needs clear roles, practical playbooks, escalation paths, communication steps, evidence handling and recovery coordination. RTCS reviews, develops and tests incident response so your organisation can act quickly and confidently when something goes wrong.
- Incident response plan review and development
- Practical playbooks for ransomware, BEC, data breach and cloud compromise
- Roles, severity ratings and escalation matrix design
- Evidence handling and forensic-preservation guidance
- Microsoft 365, Entra ID and cloud incident response
- Privileged-account, supplier and critical-system playbooks
- Communication planning and regulatory notification design
- Tabletop exercises for technical, executive and board audiences
- Post-exercise improvement planning and readiness roadmap
Incident response is the ability to act. Not a saved document.
Incident response readiness is the ability to identify, assess, contain, manage and recover from a cyber incident - the plans, people, processes and tools needed to respond to ransomware, business email compromise, data breaches, malware, account compromise, cloud compromise and system disruption. The goal is to reduce confusion, shorten response time and limit business impact.
Cyber incidents are stressful, time-sensitive and often unclear at the start.
No clear incident owner
Escalation paths are unclear
Technical and business teams working separately
Evidence is not preserved properly
Communication is delayed or inconsistent
Executives are briefed too late
Legal, privacy and regulatory steps are missed
Playbooks are outdated or too generic
Recovery steps not aligned with business priorities
Lessons from previous incidents are not tracked
A plan your team can actually follow under pressure.
An incident response plan should explain how your organisation responds from initial detection through to containment, recovery and post-incident review. RTCS reviews or develops plans covering the moving parts that matter when something is on fire.
Practical playbooks for the incidents you'll actually face.
Playbooks help teams respond consistently to common incident types. Each playbook sets out key actions, owners, escalation points, evidence considerations and communication requirements.
Ransomware
Containment, isolation, recovery decision tree, ransom-payment policy, backup alignment and regulator / customer notification triggers.
Business Email Compromise
Account containment, mailbox rule review, financial-fraud response, finance and supplier communications paths.
Data Breach
Triage, scoping, evidence preservation, Notifiable Data Breaches assessment, customer comms and regulator engagement.
Cloud / M365 Compromise
Identity containment, token revocation, blast-radius assessment across Entra ID, Microsoft 365 and connected SaaS.
Privileged Account Compromise
Domain admin, cloud admin and break-glass account handling - containment, credential rotation, AD / Entra ID forensics.
Supplier Compromise
Third-party impact triage, contractual notification, isolation of supplier connectivity. Pair with Supply Chain Risk.
Malware & Lost Devices
Endpoint, malware outbreak and lost / stolen device playbooks for routine but high-impact scenarios.
Critical System Outage
Triage, escalation, recovery prioritisation and communications when a core business system goes down.
Ransomware & Data Breach
Ransomware Readiness
Ransomware can affect systems, backups, identity, operations and communications at the same time. RTCS reviews response steps, recovery dependencies, backup considerations, communication plans and decision points - including ransom-payment policy, isolation steps, executive escalation and evidence preservation. Pair with Disaster Recovery & Backups.
Data Breach Response
Data breaches require careful coordination across technical, legal, privacy, communications and leadership teams. RTCS prepares processes for initial triage, affected-data identification, evidence handling, internal escalation, stakeholder communications, NDB scheme considerations and post-incident review. Pair with Privacy Advisory.
Practise the response before you need it.
A tabletop exercise helps your team practise incident response before a real event. RTCS designs and facilitates realistic cyber scenarios so teams can test decisions, escalation, communication and response actions in a safe setting.
For executive-level crisis decisions and BCP wrapped around the technical response, pair with Crisis Management & Cyber Resilience.
Readiness vs Response
Incident Response Readiness
Prepares your organisation before an incident - plans, playbooks, roles, escalation paths, communication processes and testing. What we cover on this page.
Live Incident Response
The actual response during an event - containment, eradication, recovery and post-incident activity. Pair with Detection & Response Readiness for the SIEM, EDR and operational side that surfaces the incident in the first place.
Understand to Report
A practical, staged engagement that produces plans, playbooks and exercises your team can use under real pressure.
Review your organisation, systems, teams, risks, existing plans and response responsibilities.
Assess current readiness, documentation, playbooks, escalation paths and gaps.
Develop or update incident response plans, playbooks and supporting material.
Where included, run a tabletop exercise to test response processes and decision-making.
Provide clear findings, improvement actions and a practical readiness roadmap.
Who It's For & What You Receive
Who This Service Is For
- Need an incident response plan
- Need to update existing response documentation
- Need practical playbooks for common incidents
- Need ransomware readiness support
- Need data breach response planning
- Need to test IR with a tabletop exercise
- Need clearer roles and escalation paths
- Need board or executive incident readiness
- Want practical preparation without complexity
Typical Deliverables
- Incident response readiness review
- Incident response plan
- Incident response playbooks
- Ransomware readiness review
- Data breach response process
- Escalation matrix
- Communication templates
- Tabletop exercise scenario
- Exercise facilitation
- Post-exercise report
- Improvement roadmap
- Executive summary
Where IR readiness connects to the rest of the program.
Crisis Management & Cyber Resilience →
Executive crisis decisions, BCP and the layer wrapped around the technical response.
Detection & Response Readiness →
SIEM, EDR and identity monitoring that surfaces the incident before it gets worse.
Proactive Threat Hunting →
Find precursor activity that turns into a real incident if left alone.
Disaster Recovery & Backups →
Backup, restore and recovery capability that the IR plan depends on.
Privacy Advisory →
Notifiable Data Breaches scheme readiness and Privacy Act obligations during incidents.
Supply Chain Risk →
Supplier compromise scenarios, third-party impact triage and contractual notification design.
Identity & Access Management →
Privileged access and identity controls that determine how bad an account compromise gets.
vCISO & Security Advisory →
Executive-level oversight of the IR program and integration with the broader security roadmap.
The middle of a cyber incident is the wrong time to work out who is responsible, what to do first and how to communicate. Talk to us about incident response readiness, ransomware planning, data breach response, incident response playbooks or tabletop exercises.
Common Questions
What is incident response readiness?
Incident response readiness is the preparation needed to respond effectively to a cyber incident. It includes plans, playbooks, roles, escalation paths, communication processes and testing.
Do we need an incident response plan?
Yes. An incident response plan helps your organisation respond quickly and consistently during a cyber incident.
What is an incident response playbook?
A playbook is a practical guide for responding to a specific incident type, such as ransomware, business email compromise or data breach.
Can you help with ransomware readiness?
Yes. RTCS can review ransomware readiness, develop ransomware playbooks and run ransomware tabletop exercises.
Can you help with data breach response planning?
Yes. RTCS can help prepare data breach response processes, including triage, evidence handling, escalation and notification considerations.
Do you run tabletop exercises?
Yes. RTCS can design and facilitate tabletop exercises for executives, technical teams, risk teams and business leaders.
Is this the same as incident response?
No. Incident response readiness prepares your organisation before an incident. Incident response is the live response during an actual event.
Available across Australia.
RTCS provides incident response readiness for Australian organisations, with sensitive client material handled onshore. See cyber security services across Australia for delivery information.
Not sure what you need?
Use the enquiry form or email [email protected] with a brief summary. Include your organisation, the service area if known, and any timing requirements.