– INCIDENT RESPONSE
Incident Response Retainer
Elite Incident Response Expertise, Ready the Moment You Need It.
Helping organizations stay prepared, resourced, and resilient when cyber incidents strike. Eristotle’s Incident Response Retainer gives you pre-contracted, SLA-driven access to elite cyber responders, ready to assess, triage, and guide your organization through its most critical moments. More than emergency support, this proactive engagement equips your team with a plan, a process, and a clear path to faster recovery, stronger decision-making, and long-term resilience.
Rapid Expertise on Standby to Minimize Breach Impact and Downtime.
When a cybersecurity breach strikes, every second counts. Organizations must move fast, not only to contain the attack, but to protect their reputation, stakeholders, regulatory standing, and future operations. Yet many organizations only discover gaps in their response capability at the worst possible moment: mid-incident, under pressure, and facing a procurement cycle that takes days when they have hours.
Eristotle’s Incident Response (IR) Retainer is a pre-contracted annual subscription that ensures elite responders are already engaged, aligned, and on standby, before the crisis hits. It combines proactive preparedness with reactive response capability, delivering direct, prioritized access to highly skilled cyber responders through a formal, SLA-backed engagement model.
The retainer provides:
- Guaranteed, SLA-driven access to highly skilled cyber responders
- A proactive engagement structure (Initial Review) to define roles, contacts, and IR readiness
- A reactive response track (Initial Response) to conduct triage, forensic analysis, and guidance
- Up to 56 hours of expert effort covering both preparation and emergency support
This retainer positions your organization to drastically reduce Breach Exposure Time (BET), maintain operational control, and engage the right expertise without the delays of procurement in a crisis. required for effective, defensible risk management.
Aligned to ISOBOK™ – A Consensus Driven Standard
ISOBOK™ is developed through a rigorous consensus-driven standards development process and incorporates the collective wisdom and experience of experts in the field from around the world. It defines the skills and knowledge required by ISO professionals.
- Contains a description of generally accepted practices for the establishment of Information Security Offices.
- Community driven and consensus based, continuously updated through iterations.
- Techniques are transferable with option to modify concepts and best practices for wide range of organizational contexts.
- Includes the highly valued Reporting Framework.
1. Security Leadership
- Defines the ISO’s role, competencies, and mindset, including the different types of ISOs.
- Establishes the security organisation’s structure, charter, and board-level mandate.
- Aligns with industry standards and frameworks to develop a comprehensive security strategy.
- Covers setting up budgets, initiating security programs, and embedding the function into enterprise governance.
2. Security Culture
- Emphasizes that humans are the final line of defense and central to effective security.
- Promotes a human-centric approach through awareness, training, and behavior-shaping initiatives.
- Uses phishing simulations, access hygiene practices, and continuous reinforcement to improve behaviors.
- Encourages a feedback-driven culture of continuous improvement and user engagement.
3. Security Governance
- Establishes governance through policies, frameworks, ISMS, and the 3 Lines of Defense model.
- Defines risk management approaches, including qualitative/quantitative methods, tolerance, and appetite.
- Integrates compliance, audit, and control mechanisms to align security and business risk.
- Addresses fraud prevention, governance councils, and harmonization between compliance and security.
4. Security Advisory
- Advises on security trends, frameworks, and standards, supporting strategic and operational decisions.
- Applies a layered defense model and reviews risks across technology domains.
- Offers guidance on integrating emerging technologies and securing IT/OT environments.
5. Security Operations
- Aligns security operations with business goals through a service-based SOC model.
- Plans and executes incident and crisis management using structured detection and response frameworks.
- Defines SOC team roles and leverages platforms like SIEM, SOAR, and threat intelligence tools.
6. Security Reporting
- Delivers tiered reporting for operational, management, and board-level audiences.
- Ensures regulatory, legal, and external stakeholder reporting meets compliance obligations.
- Uses KPIs, KRIs, dashboards, and threat intelligence to communicate performance and risk posture.
- Follows best practices for effective, actionable, and transparent security reporting.
Additionally, this servcie draws on AIBOK, CWBOK, and Eristotle competency frameworks for breadth and depth to ensure consistency, credibility, and transferability across engagements.
Key Objectives
- Establish a Reliable, SLA-Backed IR Engagement Model
- Pre-contracted hotline and response process to avoid procurement delays during a crisis
- Clear roles, escalation paths, and contact points between Eristotle and your organization
- Guaranteed response times backed by formal SLAs
- Deliver Rapid, Expert Triage and Preliminary Analysis
- Structured initial triage within hours of breach notification
- Evidence-based preliminary analysis to scope impact, spread, and severity
- Clear, actionable guidance on immediate containment and next steps
- Provide Expert Direction for Response and Remediation
- Advise internal teams on investigation, containment, and recovery priorities
- Support decision-making under pressure with experienced, calm leadership
- Bridge in-house, managed service, and external resources seamlessly
- Complement and Augment Existing Internal Capabilities
- Reinforce in-house security staff during high-stress incidents
- Free internal resources to focus on operational continuity and stakeholder engagement
- Provide surge capacity without the cost of permanent hires
- Reduce Organizational Stress, Confusion, and Impact
- Remove uncertainty about whom to call and what to do when an incident hits
- Strengthen executive, board, and stakeholder confidence in IR readiness
- Minimize downtime, operational disruption, and reputational damage
Business Outcomes & Benefits
- Reduced Breach Exposure Time
- Minimize the critical window between detection and containment
- Pre-negotiated access to expert responders bypasses procurement delays
- Faster mean time to contain (MTTC) and mean time to recover (MTTR)
- Surge Support for In-House Teams
- Reinforce internal security staff during periods of high pressure
- Enable internal teams to remain focused on core responsibilities
- Avoid burnout and error rates during prolonged incidents
- Faster Recovery and Confident Decision-Making
- Experienced IR consultants assess scope, recommend remediation, and align response with executive priorities
- Clearer alignment between technical containment and business decisions
- Stronger coordination across security, IT, legal, and communications
- Preparedness and Executive Assurance
- Demonstrable readiness for complex, high-stakes threat scenarios
- Stronger confidence among boards, regulators, insurers, and customers
- Support for cyber insurance requirements and underwriter expectations
- Smooth Handoff to Remediation or Full-Scale IR
- Seamless transition into deeper forensic, remediation, or recovery engagements
- Continuity of knowledge, context, and relationships across response phases
- No “starting from scratch” when the scope expands
- Reduced Financial, Legal, and Reputational Impact
- Faster containment reducing direct costs, downtime, and data loss
- Stronger legal defensibility through structured processes and documentation
- Protection of brand, trust, and stakeholder confidence
- Support for Regulatory and Disclosure Obligations
- Guidance on notification timelines (e.g., GDPR, DORA, NIS2, HIPAA, SEC)
- Structured evidence handling to support regulatory and legal processes
- Advisory support during regulator and insurer engagement
- Peace of Mind and Continuous Readiness
- 24/7 hotline access throughout the coverage period
- Up-to-date readiness documentation and contact protocols
- Confidence that IR capability scales with your organization as it evolves
Key Features
Proactive “Initial Review”
Within 30 days of engagement, Eristotle will:
- Define roles and points of contact between your organization and Eristotle’s IR team
- Review your threat landscape, asset criticality, breach disclosure requirements, and escalation paths
- Identify existing tools (e.g., SIEM, EDR, endpoint monitoring) that can support response activities
- Establish geographic scope and readiness posture for potential incidents
- Align on communication, legal, and regulatory considerations
- Confirm data capture, logging, and evidence-handling expectations
Reactive “Initial Response”
When an incident occurs, Eristotle provides:
- Initial Triage (within 3 hours), Gather critical facts, identify stakeholders involved, and assess immediate impact
- Preliminary Analysis (within 24–72 hours), Evaluate available forensic data, identify additional evidence requirements, and provide immediate direction
- Preliminary Analysis Report, Summarizes key findings, guidance for next steps, and recommendations for follow-on support
- Remote and Onsite Options, Flexible delivery aligned with incident severity, geography, and access requirements
Additional Features
- 24/7 Secure Hotline Access, Dedicated, prioritized channel to reach the IR team during a breach scenario
- SLA-Backed Response Commitments, Formal, contractually guaranteed response times
- Cross-Functional Expertise, Host and network forensics, malware analysis, threat intelligence, cloud, hybrid, and OT environments
- Regulatory and Disclosure Support, Guidance on notification obligations, evidence handling, and regulator engagement
- Seamless Transition Pathways, Into Rapid Deploy, full-scale IR, or remediation engagements where needed
- Alignment With Industry Standards and Eristotle Frameworks, NIST SP 800-61, ISO 27035, ENISA, ISOBOK™ and Eristotle competency frameworks
Deliverables
Deliverables
- Preliminary Analysis Report
- Documented review of the incident situation, including facts to date, threat vectors, required next steps, and recommendations for further response
- Engagement Kickoff and Checklist
- Organizational IR readiness assessment, contact lists, escalation flow, and breach handling protocols
- Secure Hotline Access
- Direct, prioritized channel to reach Eristotle’s IR team during a breach scenario
- Readiness Documentation
- Guidance for logging, incident handling, and data capture recommendations
- Supports effective response and evidence preservation
- Initial Review Report
- Summary of readiness posture, known gaps, and recommended improvements
- Executive Briefing Support(as required during active incidents)
- Guidance for briefing executives, boards, and stakeholders during a live event
Why Choose Eristotle?
Our team of globally certified, battle-tested responders brings decades of experience across:
- Host and network forensics: deep investigative expertise across complex environments
- Malware analysis and threat intelligence: identification, attribution, and mitigation of advanced threats
- Sector-specific response: finance, healthcare, defense, technology, public sector, and critical infrastructure
- Regulatory and disclosure support: guidance aligned with GDPR, DORA, NIS2, HIPAA, SEC, and sector-specific obligations
- Cloud, hybrid, and OT environments: modern, legacy, and converged estate coverage
- Peer-level engagement: with executives, boards, regulators, and legal counsel
- Alignment with global standards and frameworks: including NIST SP 800-61, ISO 27035, ENISA, and ISOBOK™
Service Commitment & SLAs
- Initial Triage (Remote): Within 3 hours
- Preliminary Analysis (Remote): Within 24 hours
- Preliminary Analysis (Onsite, if needed): Within 72 hours
The retainer contract:
- Stands valid for one year from date of purchase
- Includes up to 56 hours of effort (proactive + reactive)
- Additional services (remediation, forensic deep-dives, full-scale IR) available under separate SOW
This service does not include:
- Deployment of tools (e.g., SIEM, EDR, endpoint agents)
- Development of incident response plans, playbooks, or runbooks
- Full-scale forensics or post-breach remediation (can be scoped separately)
- Multiple IR events under a single retainer (only one Preliminary Analysis is covered)
- Crisis communications, legal representation, or public relations services
- Ongoing monitoring, detection, or managed SOC services
- These and related capabilities are available through other Eristotle services and can be bundled as part of a broader engagement.
How We Deliver
The retainer is delivered through a structured, four-stage engagement model designed to ensure you are prepared before the crisis, supported during the event, and guided into recovery afterward.
- Engagement Setup, Initial Review (within 30 days of purchase)
- Onboarding workshops and readiness assessment
- Role, contact, and escalation definition
- Documentation of readiness posture and gaps
- Incident Hotline Activation (24/7 during coverage period)
- Dedicated, prioritized contact mechanism
- Continuously maintained contact and escalation information
- Annual review and refresh of readiness artifacts
- Response Execution (Triage → Preliminary Analysis → Reporting)
- Rapid triage within SLA
- Evidence-based preliminary analysis, remote or onsite
- Preliminary Analysis Report and immediate guidance
- Transition to Full IR Engagement (optional)
- Expansion into Incident Response Rapid Deploy, full-scale IR, or remediation
- Continuity of team, context, and relationships
- Integration with related Eristotle services for long-term capability uplift
Throughout the engagement, Eristotle works alongside your internal teams, providing calm, experienced leadership at the most critical moments, ensuring your organization responds with clarity, control, and confidence.
Ready to Transform Your Breach Readiness Into a Source of Resilience and Trust?
Partner with Eristotle to evaluate, strengthen, and formalize your breach management capabilities across the full lifecycle, from detection and response to communication, recovery, and lessons learned. Uncover critical gaps, benchmark against industry peers, and build a prioritized roadmap to proactive resilience. Book a free 30-minute discovery call with an Eristotle advisor. No commitment required.