This article appeared in Cybersecurity Law & Strategy, an ALM publication for privacy and security professionals, Chief Information Security Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Corporate Counsel, Internet and Tech Practitioners, In-House Counsel. Visit the website to learn more.

Suppose you have invested considerable time and money creating an Incident Response Plan (IRP) and delivering annual Tabletop Exercises (TTE) within your organization in the hopes that these efforts will drive an efficient and effective response when a breach occurs. If that is the entirety of your response strategy, you are going to be disappointed. Developing and delivering an IRP or TTE to improve the effectiveness of your incident response approach, in isolation, does not work. If your incident response preparation activity does not include some fundamental tactical actions, when the time comes and your house is on fire, your breach response will fail to meet your expectations, I promise.

In my 23 years of delivering incident response and digital forensics services to companies I've become fairly adept at predicting how an incident response engagement will go, based on the first 10 minutes of an initial call with a client. Some clients are well prepared and able to chug through the incident process with our team and get back to routine operations in a couple of days. Other, less prepared clients are in for a painful experience that could drag on, consuming resources and dollars for more than two or three weeks. It is entirely how those clients prepared for the incident that makes the difference.