Incident Readiness

The services

Our Incident Readiness services focus on building organisational capability and confidence in responding to cyber incidents and crises. We develop incident readiness at multiple levels in organisations - from the boardroom to the IT incident bridge. Our readiness offerings are in two categories. 

Development of plans, procedures, and playbooks:

• Development and refinement of incident response plans
• Development of threat-aligned playbooks for common incident scenarios 
• Development of rapid containment plans that are specific to devices, applications, platforms, and technology environments used by your organisation
• Establishment of an incident response team, roles, and communication channels
• Creation of communication strategies (including out-of-band communications) and templates
• Identification of incident-relevant stakeholders (internal & external), and development of stakeholder management plans
• Implementation of forensic readiness and response processes
• Reviewing logging and monitoring implementation (more detail in detection engineering service offering)
• Creation of business continuity and disaster recovery plans (more detail in cyber resilience service offering)
• Evaluating technology dependencies within major incident recovery scenarios
• Development of incident recovery prioritisation playbooks

We conduct thorough and holistic exercise and simulation programs, including:

• C-suite and board interactive cyber security simulations
• Technology team tabletop exercises for specific incident scenarios aligned to organisational threat context
• Training for technical teams on incident response processes and techniques
• Board and executive team cyber security deep dive sessions

Germane Advisory’s team has extensive experience delivering these services for large Australian organisations. 

The problems we help address

Our incident readiness services address the critical need for organisations to be prepared for cyber security incidents before they occur. They help:

• Increase the confidence of management and responders in fulfilling their roles during an incident
• Increase the confidence of the board in management’s preparedness for what the AICD regularly reminds directors is a top risk.
• Increase the speed of decision making and effectiveness of response teams during actual incidents
• Minimise damage and costs from cyber attacks through faster responses and better decision making
• Achieve regulatory compliance in incident handling
• Maintain internal and external stakeholder confidence during crises
• Improve coordination between disparate parts of the organisation that would need to collaborate to solve a real incident
• Build muscle memory for incident and crisis response processes
• Reduce the risk of human error during incidents
• Demonstrate due diligence to regulators and insurers

The difference we strive for

At Germane Advisory, our approach to Incident Readiness is pragmatic and people-centric. We focus on creating plans and processes that work in real-world scenarios, respond to real-world threats, and are easily understood and executed by your team. Our passion for quality ensures that your organisation is truly prepared, not just on paper, but in practice.

We emphasise the human element of incident response. We bring the experience of delivering dozens of c-suite and board level cyber security exercises and having coordinated many more cyber security incidents and crises and post incident reviews. Understanding what experiencing a real incident is like and delivering realistic and grounded readiness services to help organisations prepare is key to us fulfilling our objective of helping organisations become resilient custodians of community and consumer trust.

Major cyber security incidents and crises represent converged problems that include privacy, crisis management, and data governance challenges, as well as business disruption or impact. Bringing a multi-disciplinary team to bear on these problems is central to the way Germane Advisory prepares organisations for these situations.

We're creative in our approach to incident preparedness, developing innovative scenarios that challenge your team and uncover hidden opportunities. Our future-focused mindset means we're always looking ahead to emerging threats, ensuring your plans stay relevant in a rapidly evolving threat landscape.

Our value-minded approach means we focus on preparedness measures that deliver the most significant impact, and prepare you for the most significant threats. We understand that resources are often limited, so we help you prioritise your efforts for maximum effectiveness. 

With Germane Advisory, you're not just ticking boxes on an incident response checklist. You're building true organisational resilience, confidence, and capability to face any cyber challenge that comes your way.