World-Class Cybersecurity Training & Consultancy

Cyber Incident Response Playbook Creation and Review

Strengthen Your Cyber Resilience with a Custom Incident Response Playbook Created/Reviewed by Top-Tier Specialists

BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL

Cyber Incident Response Playbooks Creation & Review Services

When a cyber attack occurs, the difference between a contained security incident and a full-scale data breach is usually NOT in the attack itself. It usually depends on how quickly and effectively the organisation responds. Our analysis of major security breaches shows that companies with well-structured, regularly tested cyber incident response playbooks can contain threats up to 60% faster and cut breach-related costs by nearly half compared to those reacting without a predefined strategy.

As the creators of the UK Government’s NCSC Assured Cyber Incident Response training, we’ve seen firsthand how the first critical hour — often called the ‘Golden Hour’ — plays a decisive role in determining the overall impact of a cyber incident. A swift, coordinated response in this window can mean the difference between a minor disruption and a major crisis.

Yet, many businesses rely on theoretical playbooks that fail in real-world conditions. That’s where our Security Incident Response Playbook Creation and Review Service comes in, ensuring your organisation is truly prepared with:

  • Actionable, tested processes that go beyond static documentation.
  • Clear, role-specific instructions that remain effective under high-pressure scenarios.
  • Practical strategies that factor in staff availability, skill levels, and response time constraints.
  • Seamless integration with your existing security tools and operational workflows.
  • Customised guidance tailored to your specific threat landscape and business risks.

With extensive experience in training and advising security teams across industries, we don’t just create playbooks that look good on paper—we develop real-world-ready response roadmaps that ensure your teams can act decisively when it matters most.

Want to enhance your incident response capabilities with practical, field-tested playbooks? Let’s talk. 

 

Bespoke Incident Response Playbooks for Rapid Cyber Crisis Management

Challenges with Incident Response Playbooks - Solved!

Theoretical Playbooks

Playbooks that are just untested documents fail to salvage your organisation in a real-world, high-pressure crisis. 

Staff Unpreparedness

Very often Playbooks lack role-specific guidance, especially for crisis that happen off-hours. 

High Breach Costs

In the absence of effective Incident Response Playbooks, a breach means that you could face high regulatory fines, downtime, and reputational damage.

Inconsistent Processes

Unclear processes, poorly defined communication channels and protocols and ad-hoc responses lead to errors and delays in mitigating any crisis. 

Our playbooks cover attack workflows, decision frameworks, and tested response actions.

Benefits of our Incident Response Playbook Creation & Review Services

Faster Incident Containment

We create customised IR playbooks aligned with your specific risk profile with specific 'Golden Hour' strategies. Your cyber and operational resilience improves by approximately 50% with clear, actionable and tested processes for incident response.

Role-Specific Guidance

Streamlined and consistent processes for IT, Legal, Comms and Leadership reduce downtime and potential financial losses during incidents. Your staff feels better prepared and confident in managing incidents - even those that occur during off-hours. 

Improved Compliance

We create and assess your playbooks against the NIST framework which ensures a structured and effective response strategy. A Playbook aligned with industry best practices also ensures that you meet regulatory requirements and industry best practices.

Risk Management & Tool Integration

A well-defined IR Playbook allows you to anticipate potential threats and prepare your response in advance. The Playbook is also integrated with your with existing security stacks, leading to a swift and coordinated response, minimising downtime and data loss.

Tested via Tabletop Exercises

A bespoke Incident Response Playbook which is tested with Cyber Tabletop Exercises ensures its efficacy against data exposure. Such proactive crisis management also helps maintain customer trust, regulatory compliance, and brand reputation, preventing long-term reputational damage.

Reduced Costs

By effectively mitigating the impact of cyber incidents with your tailored Playbooks, you will significantly reduce financial losses. These losses may arise from data breaches or system downtimes. They can also come in the form of hefty regulatory fines imposed due to non-compliance with data protection laws.

CYBER ATTACK TABLETOP EXERCISES

Professionally-conducted, engaging, interactive Cyber Drills

Our Cyber Tabletop Exercises are designed & often conducted by the most experienced tabletop facilitator in the world.

Take a look at the video on the right to see what exactly our Cyber Crisis Tabletop Exercises can do for your business.

  • Help you achieve compliance and demonstrate commitment to your cybersecurity posture.
  • Build muscle memory for your key Incident Response Team members.
  • Allow decision-making practice in a dynamic and highly evolved simulated attack scenario. 
BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL

 

CYBER ATTACK TABLETOP EXERCISES

Professionally-conducted, engaging, interactive Cyber Drills

Our Cyber Tabletop Exercises are designed & often conducted by the most experienced tabletop facilitator in the world.

Take a look at the video on the right to see what exactly our Cyber Crisis Tabletop Exercises can do for your business.

  • Help you achieve compliance and demonstrate commitment to your cybersecurity posture.
  • Build muscle memory for your key Incident Response Team members.
  • Allow decision-making practice in a dynamic and highly evolved simulated attack scenario. 
BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL
Incident Response Playbook Development

Our Approach

Professionally designed playbooks play a crucial role in helping you respond successfully to all types of cyber attacks. Our structured and expertly-designed Incident Response playbooks offer several benefits including:

• Consistent Response + Repeatable actions
• Increased learning & retention
• Building 'muscle' memory in humans
• Decreasing and lowering panicked response to incidents.

The workflow on the right outlines our systematic and structured approach to creating an IR Playbook that's just right for your business. 

Playbooks Approach (1)

Why Partner with CM-Alliance - World Leaders in Cyber Incident Response

Global Network Large

Global Recognition

Our status as a UK Government Crown Commercial Service Supplier (G-Cloud 12) attests to our credibility.
Ribbon

Leaders in Cyber Incident Response

We are the creators of the world-renowned NCSC Assured Cyber Incident Planning & Response Training and the Building and Optimising Incident Response Playbooks Training.
Checklist

Bespoke IR Playbook Creation & Review

We tailor every aspect of your Incident Response Playbook to match your unique risk landscape, your organisational structure and business goals.   
Hands

Confidential & Secure

All documentation and methodologies are privileged and copyrighted to Cyber Management Alliance Ltd, ensuring the highest levels of discretion.
Monitor

Unmatched Professional Expertise

Our team comprises cybersecurity practitioners with decades of experience in incident response, playbooks creation and threat mitigation.
Transform theoretical plans into actionable workflows.

Phases of Cyber Incident Playbook Creation

  • Phase 1: Obtain Facts

    We begin with a comprehensive fact-finding mission to understand your organisation's complete operational context.

    • Current State Evaluation: Risk Assessment Appetite, Evaluation of Existing Policies and Procedures, Historical Incident Analysis, Review of Current Playbooks, IR Plans and Processes, Technology Stack Assessment. 

    • Organisational Structure Analysis: Analysis of Reporting Lines and Decision-making Processes, Team Compositions and Capabilities, Geographical Distribution.

    • Regulatory & Legal Framework Review: Compliance Requirements, Reporting obligations and Data protection Requirements. 

    • External Context Assessment: Analysis of Industry-specific threats, Regional considerations and Supply chain dependencies.

    • Asset Discovery: Critical Business Systems, Data Assets and Infrastructure Components. 

  • Phase 2: Playbooks Workshop

    Our collaborative workshop phase operates across two parallel tracks:

    • Threat Actors Track: Review of the organisation's Threat Intelligence Sources. Analysis of Past Security Incidents. Engagement with critical suppliers for Threat Insights. Analysis of hostile and non-hostile threat actors. Comprehensive Threat Actor Profiles.

    • Critical Assets Track: Identification and Prioritisation of Critical Assets. Engagement with Asset Owners and Stakeholders. Assessment of Business Impact Scenarios. Mapping Threats to Specific Assets. Determining Vulnerability Exposure.

  • Phase 3: Scenario Planning

    Building on the outputs of Phase 2, we then:

    • Design bespoke incident scenarios

    • Define impact metrics and thresholds

    • Agree on target systems and scope

    • Model potential business impacts

    • Validate scenarios with stakeholders

  • Phase 4: Playbook Creation
    Following scenario approval, in this phase we:

    • Develop detailed response procedures.

    • Create asset-specific playbooks.

    • Map to identified threats.

    • Define roles and responsibilities.

    • Establish communication protocols.

    • Create training materials.

Our methodology combines the NIST Incident Response Lifecycle with a proven four-phase development process, refined through our wide experience in delivering NCSC Assured trainings.


Highlights of Our Incident Response Playbook Creation Process


Our unique and methodical approach to Playbooks Creation and/or Review ensures that your IR playbooks are:

• Grounded in your operational reality
• Aligned with your risk profile
• Practical and actionable
• Fully tested and validated
• Ready for immediate implementation

Each phase includes validation checkpoints and stakeholder reviews to ensure alignment with your requirements and operational constraints. The process is iterative, allowing for refinement based on feedback and changing circumstances.

The below image further clarifies our approach and describes the actual process in more detail including the various validation sessions to ensure the IR Playbook is fit-for-purpose and tailored to your risks and technology stacks.

Playbooks Creation Approach

Key Deliverables - Cyber Incident Response Playbooks Creation 


High-Level Attack Workflow		 A strategic visualisation that maps attack vectors and their progression paths, critical decision points and triggers, response team activation thresholds, stakeholder involvement points, external communication requirements, escalation pathways and recovery initiation criteria.
Decision-Logic Framework A structured decision-making guide that provides clear incident classification criteria, impact evaluation guidelines,
response priority frameworks, escalation criteria, stakeholder notification triggers and authorisation requirements for critical actions.
Comprehensive Playbook Actions Detailed response procedures organized according to the NIST framework of Detect & Analyse, Respond & Contain, Recover & Close and Plan & Prepare. 

 

 

Incident Response Playbooks

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Incident Response playbooks are step-by-step guides that are activated at the time of a crisis. They define roles, actions, and decision points during cyber incidents. They are vital documents for ensuring a coordinated and efficient response.

The 'Golden Hour' refers to the first 60 minutes of an attack or crisis. It determines 90% of breach outcomes. Our playbooks prioritise rapid detection, analysis, and containment within this window.

Our streamlined process delivers a comprehensive playbook in 8 weeks. These 8 weeks also include workshops and testing of the Playbook.

We combine NCSC-assured expertise with real-world incident data to create actionable (not theoretical) workflows tailored to your risk profile. Our Playbooks are bespoke i.e. curated specifically for your organisational structure, its most critical assets and threat profile. They are also tested for viability and real-world efficacy with Cyber Tabletop Exercises. 

Read what our clients have to say about our Services

We pride ourselves on providing an exceptional service to our clients, but you don’t just have to take our word for it. Read what our clients have to say about working with us.

"The overall objective was to demonstrate & raise awareness amongst the board members. It is a regulatory obligation to ensure that the board are aware of their duties when it comes to incident response & cyber management. It was very important to run this workshop in my opinion… because although we have incident response plans internally, it was imperative to test them & the board’s engagement with a well-defined scenario created by myself and Amar. 

 

The muscle memory for the board and raising awareness among them regarding roles and responsibilities were the key tangible benefits. We’ve also been able to test the board’s decision-making skills which was vital. Improved awareness amongst board members regarding Cyber Incident Response and other Cybersecurity issues was evident, especially after the second workshop in 2021. For many organisations, I would recommend that it should be on their agenda to run a workshop like this, especially from a board perspective."  

Mudassar Ulhaq

CIO - Waverton Investment Management

"The facilitator conducted the fact finding and then planned the ransomware scenario to make it relevant and contextual to our organisation. Further, the exercise was conducted in a way that made the scenario feel real for the participants. They were encouraged to think like and respond as they would in an actual crisis.
 
Amar is a great facilitator. He is highly experienced which makes his insights very useful to all participants. But more importantly, he really knows how to engage a room full of business executives who may not always be in the loop with all technical aspects of cyber and ransomware prevention and response.

The ransomware tabletop exercise conducted by Cyber Management Alliance gave us exactly the kind of output we were expecting and met all our objectives. 
The executive report shared with us at the end was insightful and highlighted our strengths and weaknesses clearly. We know what needs to be worked upon and where we need more clarity. Thanks CM-Alliance and Amar for this extremely helpful and critical exercise in our overall cyber resilience strategy."

Catherine Butterill

Head of IT Operations, Directorate of Digital Services - Northern Lincolnshire And Goole NHS Foundation Trust

"We selected Cyber Management Alliance to conduct a non-technical, scenario-based, cyber-attack table-top exercise for members of our senior management.  Amar Singh is an excellent facilitator and is highly experienced which makes his insights useful to all participants. He engaged our incident response handling team and presented highly technical concepts in a non-technical, easy to understand manner.

The session and scenarios were relevant to our business and the tabletop ransomware exercise was conducted in a deeply engaging and conducive manner and the session met our objectives.”

Jenny Kray

Chief Finance Officer - Ashling Partners

"We needed something that’s more like a true demonstration of the capability of the business to actually respond. I wanted to get a fresh approach and that's why we opted for CM-Alliance’s CCTE Assessment.

Amar and I spent a good amount of time talking through options and planning the right scenario(s) for the tabletop test; We tried our best to design the scenarios to be challenging enough and both engaging and exciting to be a part of. The CCTE & the corresponding audit conducted has given us insights to reinforce our cyber strategy by continuing to help build the picture of where we were, where we are now and our next focussed steps. We will be engaging CM-Alliance on an annual basis.”

Neil Mallon

Strategic Technology Leader - Aster Group, UK

"The sessions and scenarios were relevant to our business and the tabletop ransomware exercises were conducted in a deeply engaging manner. The ransomware communication response templates were comprehensive and completely relevant to our business context and the accompanying communication plan was fit-for-purpose. Amar Singh is an excellent facilitator and is highly experienced which makes his insights useful to all participants. Importantly, Amar knows how to engage a room full of business executives and is able to present highly technical concepts in a nontechnical, easy to understand manner.”

Kanoksak Keekarjai

Head of Global Security, Risk and IT Compliance - SIG Global

"Cyber Management Alliance Ltd assigned their top and experienced security consultants to deliver our requirements. The consultants worked closely with my team and conducted output focused workshops to then plan, produce and conduct deeply engaging tabletop exercises.


CM-Alliance’s methodology and approach helped extract the most relevant information and data to enable them to construct highly relevant attack scenarios. 

 

Both the technical and executive tabletop sessions conducted by Cyber Management Alliance Ltd met all our objectives. The attendees from both the sessions were impressed with the facilitation and the outcome-driven approach and left the participants more informed and aware of the response processes and procedures.”

Nadeem Bashir

IT Compliance Manager - Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe Ltd

Why not book a discovery call to discuss your requirements?

Want more information on our Cyber Incident Response Playbooks Creation and Review Services? Book a no-obligation discovery call with one of our consultants. 

Book a Discovery Call
Let us show you why our clients trust us and love working with us.
All trademarks, service marks, trade names, product names, service names and logos appearing on the site, or on printed or digital material are the property of their respective owners, including in Cyber Management Alliance Ltd. Any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved.
Footer Top Background Image
Simply fill in your details to request a FREE callback