1. Define the incident scenarios that matter
Anchor readiness work in realistic threats, critical business services, and the incidents most likely to create consequential decisions.
2. Map roles, systems, and dependencies
Identify who leads, who decides, which technical platforms responders need, where evidence lives, and which external parties can affect the response.
3. Review technical response capability
Validate access to logs, identity controls, endpoint tooling, network controls, cloud platforms, backups, and other systems required for investigation and containment.
4. Exercise decision and escalation paths
Use scenarios and injects to expose unclear authority, missing information, communications friction, and slow handoffs.
5. Prioritize improvements
Turn observations into concrete actions across people, process, and technology, with owners and sequencing based on operational impact.
6. Revalidate
Revisit high-priority changes so readiness becomes a maintained capability rather than a one-time document review.
Related next step
Use this resource as a starting point, then adapt it to the systems, business constraints, and threat model that actually apply to your organization.