Emergency Readiness & Response
Respond. Contain.Recover.
Prepare your organisation to detect, respond to and recover from cyber incidents with speed and confidence.
Understanding Emergency Readiness & Response
Ready before an incident, back to business fast after one.
A structured approach to preparing for, managing and recovering from cyber incidents: response playbooks, crisis simulations, forensic readiness and post-incident recovery support, delivered through scenario-based exercises, tabletop simulations and technical guidance.
Why it matters: incidents can happen at any time, and the speed of your response often decides the scale of the impact. Preparing your people, processes and technology minimises disruption, protects critical assets and keeps stakeholder confidence.
Features
Everything you needwhen it matters most.
Six capabilities that turn a potential crisis into a contained event.
Rapid containment
Coordinated, immediate response that limits the impact of cyber events.
Crisis preparedness
Tested playbooks to guide decision-making under pressure.
Governance & reporting
Clear escalation to boards, regulators and stakeholders.
Forensic readiness
Evidence preserved for investigation, compliance and learning.
Recovery planning
Structured recovery that minimises downtime and supports continuity.
Custom scenarios
Exercises tailored to your industry, systems and risk profile.
The challenges it solves
Most plansare never tested.
Without tested plans, organisations face prolonged outages, financial loss and regulatory penalties. We close the gaps that slow a response down.
01
Untested plans
Response plans that haven’t been rehearsed against real-world scenarios.
02
Slow decisions
Unclear authority and escalation when every minute counts.
03
Poor coordination
Teams, suppliers and leaders working without a shared playbook.
04
Prolonged recovery
Outages that drag on, increasing cost and regulatory exposure.
By the numbers
The threatin numbers.
25%
of UK businesses have a formal incident response plan (57% of medium, 76% of large)
31%
of UK businesses have a board member responsible for cyber
18
highly significant UK incidents in a year, up about 50%, the third annual rise
Source: NCSC Annual Review 2025
247 days
global average time to identify and contain a breach, up for the first time in five years
Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2026
Case study
Emergency Readiness & Responsein action.
Financial services
A local partner that keeps a regulated insurer compliant and ready to respond.
What the work covered: Managed security service, ISO 27001 compliance support and a desktop exercise
The challenge
The insurer’s previous security supplier went into administration. Its customer contracts require ISO 27001 compliance, and as an FCA-regulated firm a breach would be severely damaging to its reputation.
The approach
It took three quotes and chose CyberQ for its size, its Birmingham base and the promise of personal service. CyberQ provides the managed service with a consistent account team, monthly account meetings and customised reports, and ran a desktop exercise with the business.
The result
CyberQ “ticks all those boxes” for ISO 27001, the desktop exercise was described as very powerful, and when urgent work was needed the team worked weekends to deliver it.
~300
staff covered at contract start
Monthly
account meetings and customised reporting
ISO 27001
customer-contract compliance supported
They ran a desktop exercise with us and that was very powerful.
The onboarding process
From first assessmentto confident response.
Six steps to build, test and keep improving your response capability.
01
Discovery & scoping
Identify critical assets, business priorities and threat scenarios.
02
Baseline assessment
Review existing response plans, policies and staff readiness.
03
Response planning
Tailored playbooks and escalation protocols for your risks.
04
Simulation & training
Tabletop exercises, live drills and scenario workshops.
05
Monitoring & review
Assess effectiveness, capture lessons and refine processes.
06
Continuous improvement
Updated plans and ongoing guidance as threats evolve.
Related services
Strengthen yourprotection further.
Services that help you prevent, detect and respond to incidents.
Board Cyber Crisis Simulation
Prepare your board to lead through a real cyber crisis.
Learn more
Managed XDR
Always-on threat detection and response from CyberQ’s Security Operations Centre.
Learn more
Penetration Testing
CREST-accredited testers find the gaps before attackers do.
Learn more
Cyber Awareness Training
Turn your people into a strong first line of defence.
Learn more
AskQ Health Check
How resilient are you, really?
Answer 13 quick questions and get a score across six areas, plus where to focus first. It takes about three minutes.
FAQs
Questions,answered.
What organisations most often ask us about Emergency Readiness & Response. Can’t find your question? Speak to one of our experts.
View all FAQs
A service that prepares you for, and supports you through, cyber incidents: response playbooks, crisis simulations, forensic readiness and recovery support.
Yes. Call our incident responders on 0800 0614 715 and we’ll help you contain the incident and recover.
Ransomware, data breaches and other high-impact security events, with scenarios tailored to your industry and systems.
Through tabletop exercises, live drills and scenario-based workshops that test your people, processes and decision-making.
Yes. Clear escalation, reporting and forensic readiness support compliance and demonstrate preparedness.
Get started
Talk to us aboutEmergency Readiness &Response.
Book a demo, ask a question or download the service sheet to share with your team. A CyberQ specialist will be in touch.
Download service sheet
Emergency response
Under attack right now? Don’t fill in a form.
Call our incident responders and we’ll help you contain it and recover.
0800 0614 715
Send us a message
Tell us a little about your organisation and what you need. Fields marked * are required.