Incident Response Readiness (IRR): Ready for 2026 Threats?

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, while tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sun Tzu’s ancient military wisdom and advice are as relevant today as it was on the battlefields thousands of years ago. The incident response plan (IRP) is the cybersecurity strategy-meets-tactics playbook.

STRATEGY: Clear governance, defined roles and responsibilities, communication plans, and objectives of response

TACTICS: Step-by-step playbooks, proven tools and procedures, tabletop exercises, performance metrics and more

Proper alignment of strategy with tactics, and regular testing of both, will enable your IRP to support the fast, coordinated action needed to contain attacks, minimize impact, and limit business disruption.

 

Think Readiness, Not Just Response

The 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that only 55% of companies have a fully documented IR plan today. Of course, that means that 45% do not. Even for those companies with an IRP, how many of those are ready to be implemented in a real-world situation?

Modern organizations can no longer rely solely on reactive incident response. Attackers have ways to stay below the radar of traditional detection techniques, and with a growing amount of advanced attack surface, can dwell in your environment for long periods of time, conducting reconnaissance to understand your network and data before deciding when and where to strike. In the meantime, security teams can’t simply wait around for a security alert to indicate something is wrong.

Incident Response Readiness (IRR) starts with a formal, documented set of procedures, tools, and guidelines for how to respond to security incidents. However, IRR is also the practical capability and readiness of the organization to execute the IRP successfully. Incident Readiness is the critical day-to-day practice of making sure you can prove that attackers aren’t already in your network.

 

The Role of Threat Hunting

To be prepared for any type of cyber incident today, your IRP must be regularly tested, scrutinized, updated, and maintained, and that’s just the start. Tactics for testing the IRP include tabletop exercises, red/blue team drills, and measurement using KPIs when testing the IRP. An additional critical component for readiness today is threat hunting. Threat hunting is the proactive search through networks, endpoints, and datasets to identify hidden threats that traditional security tools may miss. It proactively searches for indicators of compromise (IoC), suspicious patterns, and adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that may indicate an ongoing or dormant breach. When integrated into a readiness program, threat hunting can help to:

  • Detect blind spots in detection coverage, misconfigurations, and security control gaps that can be addressed before a real incident occurs.
  • Identify abnormal behaviors not associated with known threats, such as unusual Kerberos activity or suspicious authentication behavior
  • Find stealthy adversary activity, such as fileless malware or the abuse of admin tools that bypass traditional signature-based tools
  • Facilitate rapid escalation and handoff to the incident response team for advanced threats discovered.

 

The Role of Compromise Assessments: Diagnostic for Security

The same way that medical doctors use various diagnostic tests to determine whether a patient has a current infection or other past issues, compromise assessments provide the cybersecurity equivalent of a “health scan” that shows whether an organization has already been breached or has signs of past compromise. It is a comprehensive investigation conducted on a periodic basis (not necessarily when an alert or ongoing incident is known), and may include looking for and testing things such as known vulnerabilities, missing patches, log collection gaps, network configuration issues, and more.

The compromise assessment may also help to uncover hidden intrusions, account compromises, and monitoring gaps. In the event that a compromise is discovered, the assessment can help to rapidly escalate to containment and full IR, including forensic analysis to determine the scope, cause, and impact of the breach, and more.

 

Preparing for New Threats in 2026

Just as any business prepares for the holiday season with lists, sales, and shipping, they also should be ready for increased cyber threats and attacks. More than just a sales season, the holiday period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday and all points in between is an especially attractive time for threat actors. As legitimate activity spikes with greater digital transactions and greater user distractions, the risk for successful attack attempts grows. Notable threats to look out for this season include:

  • Ransomware: It’s an extra threat during the holidays when the pressure to pay the ransom to restore critical systems quickly is that much higher. The 2025 Honeywell Cyber Threat Report found that ransomware attacks increased by 46% during the first quarter of 2025. The bad news is that the number will likely be higher in Q2 2026, and the holiday period is a particularly attractive time for ransomware actors to target organizations.
  • AI-Driven Phishing & Deepfakes continue to accelerate as the improving AI technology, and many users may be more susceptible to stress during the next two months.
  • Attackers are increasingly leveraging legitimate admin tools such as PowerShell to bypass security controls and perform commands without triggering alerts, since these are trusted components of the operating system (OS).

 

Get Ready for the Attackers

Need help to know whether your organization is ready for the next attack? HALOCK Security Labs’ experienced cybersecurity team can help. We will assess your current state of readiness and work with you to develop a custom IRR Essentials Package, with everything you need to build and improve your incident response program. Ready to get started? Act today to improve incident response readiness for 2026. Waiting one more day will only leave your business more at risk.

 

Review Your Incident Response Readiness