Incident Response (IR)
Don’t be caught off guard, plan for a breach before it occurs
What is Incident Response?
Incident Response, or Cyber Security Incident Response, refers to the plan and processes in place by an IT team or an organisation. It is used to detect and respond to cyber threats and/or breaches should they occur.
A cyber attack or breach can have disastrous consequences for organisations, ranging from reputational damage to business downtime. Therefore, if this does arise, a well-thought-out incident response plan minimises the impact and facilitates the organisation’s speedy recovery.
In the current cyber climate, cyber attacks are occurring more frequently, with harsher implications. As a result, having an incident response plan is becoming increasingly vital for businesses’ survival.
How to Remain Compliant
The convergence between cyber security and compliance has furthered need for an incident response plan. Nearly all organisations will hold personal data for employees and for their customers. This means they must adhere to the privacy laws set out by GDPR and DPA regulations. There may also be specific regulatory requirements for the sector e.g., DORA for the financial sector, and potentially, specific customer reporting requirements based on any contractual agreements.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides comprehensive guidelines for incident response. This Cybersecurity Framework aims to help organisations navigate cyber incidents and ensure they remain compliant with industry standards.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) stipulates strict guidelines on data protection and requires organisations to report breaches within 72 hours. This must be integrated into an incident response plan.
Incident reporting plays a central role in remaining transparent about threats an organisation could potentially be facing. This is necessary to ensure the protection of your entire supply chain.
| Standard Retainer | Enhanced Retainer | |
| In-depth technical onboarding session |  | |
| Ability to convert to proactive services | | |
| Year on year security improvement | | |
| Detection and Containment | | |
| Threat actor Engagement | | |
| Forensic investigation | | |
| Restoration and remediation | | |
| Crisis management support | | |
Why Red Helix for IR
How Our Incident Response Works
We work with your team to build escalation plans, define legal/regulatory requirements (GDPR, NIS2, sector rules), perform mock attacks, and ensure your policies are battle-tested before anything happens.
Using 24/7 monitoring, SIEM tools, and threat intelligence, we detect and log incidents early. Email, network, remote login, and endpoint signals are correlated to decide when escalation is required.
Once an incident is identified, we isolate affected systems, triage conditions to prioritise high-impact threats, and decide whether to monitor or act immediately based on risk.
We remove threats, reset credentials, restore systems, and verify integrity. Our team supports you so operations resume, and recovery is complete.
After the crisis, we conduct root cause analysis, evaluate what worked, where gaps persisted, and feed these learnings back into your plan, tools, and readiness.
Organisations that implement a robust incident response plan can significantly reduce the impact of cyber incidents.
Talk to an expert
Why Choose Red Helix?
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Expertise: Our team has extensive experience in handling a wide range of cyber incidents.
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24/7 Support: We provide round-the-clock monitoring and response services.
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Compliance: We assist in meeting regulatory requirements, including GDPR, ISO 27001, and NIS2.
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Tailored Solutions: Our services are customised to fit your organisation’s specific needs and risks.
Why invest in a retainer?
A retainer is a forward-looking investment to improve your cyber resilience while also guaranteeing support in the event of a cyber incident. Most importantly, our retainer customers benefit from reduced likelihood of incidents, greatly reduced impact if they occur, and a dramatic reduction in costs associated with debilitating cyber incidents such as ransomware.
When you partner with an incident response team, they will recommend exercises and mock cyber attacks so you can make those crucial decisions before an attack happens. When key decisions have been made in advance, they are much easier to implement in a crisis. A rapid, expert-led response gets your business back online faster, minimising downtime and financial loss. It will also drastically reduce the stress experienced by your team.
“It’s much better when we collaborate with our customers to embed MDR responsibilities into their incident response plan, rather than the alternative of getting into an incident and not having a plan or even knowing if MDR will cover those things.”
– Mat Gangwer, Vice President of Managed Threat Response, Sophos
FAQs
Incident Response is the in-depth processes which an organisation employs if a cyber attack occurs. This includes triaging, analysis, and recovery. Whereas, Incident Management is a broader term, referring to the entire response process. This holistically incorporates communications, reporting, and any necessary escalations.
- Alerts from monitoring tools e.g., SIEM or a SOC team.
- Employees reporting incidents such as a phishing email or suspicious activity.
- Third party partners, or suppliers reporting their own threat investigations or research.
- Analyse
- Contain/mitigate
- Remediate/eradicate
- Recover
IT and security professionals e.g., network engineers, and cyber security analysts. Legal advisors to ensure compliance. Communications experts for internal and externals comms, and executive sponsors to provide leadership during the stressful period.
- SIEM
- EDR
- Collaboration platforms
- Threat intelligence platforms
- Forensic tools
Proactive incident response is the implementation of preventive measures and continued monitoring to identify and mitigate security risks before they escalate into incidents. In comparison, reactive incident response focuses on the activities undertaken to respond to security incidents after they have occurred, including detection, analysis, containment, eradication, and recovery activities.
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