Yesterday someone hit me with a question that made me blink twice:

“Why would we pay a monthly fee for an incident response plan? Isn’t that just a document?”

That’s like asking why you’d ever need to update your will, patch your firewall, or change the locks on your building.

Sure—your incident response plan is a document.
Just like your life insurance is a piece of paper...

Until someone needs it.

Here’s the kicker:
That document isn’t static.
It’s not laminated.
It’s not carved in granite.

And if you treat it like it is?
You’re going to get blindsided

This Isn’t a “Write It and Forget It” Deal

Threats change.
Your business changes.

People leave. New tools get added. Vendors come and go. Your org chart shifts, your software evolves, and before you know it—you’re referencing an incident plan that still lists Rick, who left 14 months ago and now runs a taco truck in Tampa.

(Which, for the record, makes him a terrible person to call when the breach hits.)

Here’s What “Maintenance” Actually Means:

  • Reviewing your threat posture every quarter
  • Updating data-critical assets as your business shifts
  • Reassigning roles and responsibilities when your org chart changes
  • Verifying communication protocols so you’re not relying on dead emails and wrong numbers when the crisis hits
  • Making sure your response playbooks still match your current stack

You can’t afford to have “last year’s version” of your defense plan.
You need something living.
Something you actually practice.
Something aligned to your current tech, your current people, your current risk.

But It’s Just a Document, Right?

If all you want is a PDF to put in a drawer, sure—you can pay someone $10,000 once and pretend you’re covered.

But if you want something you can hand to your cyber insurance provider, your regulator, or your attorney and say:

“Here’s what we did. Here’s why. Here’s the evidence.”

Then you’d better be ready to treat this thing like what it is:
A program.
Not a project.
And definitely not a one-time line item.

Monthly? Absolutely.

No, this isn’t a $10K-a-month CISO engagement.
But yes—it’s monthly.

Because breaches don’t happen on a convenient schedule.

And when they do?
Your plan has to work.
It has to name the right people.
Map the right data.
Trigger the right actions.

And if it doesn’t?

You won’t just be dealing with an outage.
You’ll be dealing with blame.

And unless you’ve got receipts, that blame is going to land squarely on your desk.

Don’t treat your incident response plan like a fire extinguisher.
Treat it like your legal defense strategy.

Because when the flames come, the plan you haven’t touched in a year won’t save you.
But the one you reviewed last quarter?

That one might just keep you out of court.

Let’s get your real plan in place.
Start with a Cyber Liability Assessment today.