An IR retainer is the difference between a phone number you already have and a vendor search you start at 2am with your systems down. You get a named senior lead, pre-negotiated rates, tested runbooks, and defined response times, arranged now while everyone is calm, so the bad day is a plan you execute instead of a scramble you improvise. Backed by forensics and threat intel, run with our partner CyberGlobal Boston.
Retained response costs a fraction of emergency response. And the real saving is the hours you don't lose finding help, briefing them from scratch, and negotiating price mid-crisis.
You know who picks up before anything goes wrong: a senior IR lead who already understands your environment, not a stranger reading your architecture diagram for the first time while the clock runs.
Terms, scope, and response time agreed while everyone is calm. The alternative is signing a contract and haggling on price with your data already encrypted, the single worst moment to negotiate anything.
Playbooks written for your stack and rehearsed in a tabletop before the real event: ransomware, data loss, insider, supply-chain. The plan names names and has been run at least once on paper.
Memory and disk forensics, timeline reconstruction, and court-admissible chain of custody if the incident heads toward counsel, insurance, or disclosure. Root-cause clarity, not just containment.
The Pulse Check doesn't include incident response. Retained IR starts at the Monthly managed plan: on-call response with pre-negotiated rates, tested runbooks, and an annual tabletop, so you're never negotiating an IR contract while you're actively under attack.
See small-business plans →Mid-sizedIn a managed or co-managed engagement, IR includes a named senior lead, defined RTO/RPO, court-admissible forensics if required, and quarterly tabletop exercises. Threat intelligence is routed into your SIEM as live detections, not delivered as a monthly PDF.
See how we engage →Book a 30-minute scope call. We will walk your stack, point out the exposure that matters most, and propose the right program. No cost, no obligation.