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What is a cyber incident response plan?

5.09.25

By Alan Boswell Group

Cyber security incident planning

A cyber incident response plan (IRP) is a document that outlines your business’s approach to dealing with a cyber security incident. Having a robust plan can help mitigate the impact of a security breach, limiting the financial and reputational damage to your business.

We look at why all businesses should have a cyber incident response plan, how to put an IRP together, and other ways to protect your business from the threat of cyber attacks.

Who should have a cyber incident response plan (IRP)?

All businesses and organisations that manage data or personal information are potential targets for cyber criminals. Latest government figures show that more than 600,000 UK businesses experienced some form of cyber security breach or attack in the last 12 months.

Few organisations are immune to the risk of a cyber breach, but medium-sized businesses remain one of the most at-risk categories (with a 67% incidence rate). There’s also growing awareness within the business sector that cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated, with AI impersonation becoming increasingly common.

Statistics from IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2025 also reveal that phishing remains an effective method for criminals to access systems. Despite overall phishing attempts falling, one specific type of phishing attack has actually increased and is aimed at stealing employee credentials. Criminals then use this stolen information to pretend to be an employee and log into systems, rather than hack their way in.

With all this in mind, it’s imperative that businesses feel confident and are prepared to deal with a cyber attack. Having a clear and comprehensive cyber incident response plan can help your business effectively manage a breach.

What elements make up a cyber security incident response plan?

Your incident response plan should address four key questions:

  1. How can I best protect customer, personal, and sensitive data?

  2. How can I best detect and respond to incidents effectively and in a timely manner?

  3. How can I ensure appropriate communications and responsibilities are in place and understood?

  4. How can I get to a safe and effective resolution that allows us to quickly return to business-as-usual?

Any team that’s tasked with putting together a cyber incident response plan should include members from all areas of the business. This helps to ensure that all aspects of your business are considered by experts rather than taking a purely technical approach.

How do I develop a cyber incident response plan?

An effective IRP takes a two-pronged approach:

Documentation

Clear documentation that outlines procedures is an essential part of any IRP. This could include a series of ‘how-to’ guides that explore common cyber attack scenarios – for example, what are the most common phishing tactics?

The incident response plan itself should include:

Key contacts – including senior leaders, HR, legal teams, and insurers. Your key contacts will be the first port of call, so it’s important to include a secondary contact, as well as multiple means of communication.

Flowchart of processes – this shows the steps that need to be taken when an incident has been reported. It can include details about teams responsible for specific tasks (for example, IT teams in tracking the source or legal and PR teams for drafting external communications – if you have a cyber insurance policy, the insurers would manage all of this for you).

Guidance on any legal or regulatory requirements – this should include any steps you need to take if a breach occurs, such as contacting HR or any regulatory bodies if sensitive data has been compromised.

It’s also important to remind colleagues to document the actions they’ve taken so that they can be reviewed for future planning purposes after the incident.

Practical exercises

Carrying out regular incident response exercises highlights the effectiveness of the procedures you have in place. This includes identifying what the most likely incidents are and taking the steps outlined in your drafted IRP.

This aspect should also include regular updates or training on new cyber risks and how they might present themselves (such as the rise in the use of AI).

Taking a practical approach also means understanding how and why a breach occurred so that your business can address the root cause (rather than just relying on technical changes). Understanding these causes can help prevent future incidents as it will give you a clearer view of what areas need focus, such as staff training or updating firewalls. Cyber insurers typically provide these services as part of their policy, including pre-loss training and security protection.

What else should businesses be doing to protect their cyber security?

Prevention is by far the most effective way to keep your business safe. Simple but effective precautions include:

  • updating staff about the changing nature of scams and training them to be vigilant;

  • backing up data to avoid it being held for ransom;

  • using multi-factor authentication (which will be a requirement if you have cyber insurance);

  • using strong passwords;

  • ensuring software is updated regularly;

  • investing in antivirus software.

As well as these measures and alongside a well-developed incident response plan, organisations can enhance their cyber defences by putting cyber insurance in place.

Policies can cover regulatory costs, business interruption, liability, as well as data, financial and reputational damage. Any good cyber insurance policy should restore your business to its pre-cyber attack or breach state.

Lastly, if a cyber incident does occur, the focus of incident management should always be on recovery and learning; it should never be about blame. Techniques used within cyber crime constantly evolve. Often, no matter how well trained or vigilant your employees are, incidents can and do occur. What’s important is being able to manage the incident effectively.

Business support from experienced experts

Successful management of cyber breaches relies on having an effective and comprehensive cyber incident response plan in place. If you’re worried about how to put a plan together or would prefer an independent audit of your security defences, you can find support from cyber security consultants.

To find out more about how cyber insurance can help your business, speak to our team on 01603 218000.

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