Incident Response Costs: Know Your Fees in Advance

It’s not if cyber attackers will target your business—it’s when. Even the best cybersecurity doesn’t prevent every attack, so eventually, you’ll have to think about what you do after a breach.

• How will you respond?
• What will it cost you?
• How will you mitigate damage?
• Can you restore operations quickly?
• What will you do to maintain customer trust?

The answers to these important questions lie in your incident response plan.

Or at least they should.

Traditional incident response billing makes it difficult to predict your cybersecurity budget. Typically, the cost of dealing with cyber threats is as unpredictable as the threats themselves. Think of it as calling for an emergency repair service without knowing whether you’ll be charged for a quick fix or a full-system overhaul.

You might start with what seems like a minor issue, but as the response team digs deeper, they uncover more problems, and your bill keeps ticking up. Before you know it, your cybersecurity budget has blown up, and you’re left wondering how to cover the costs without compromising other critical areas of your business.

This financial unpredictability isn’t just a minor inconvenience—it’s a significant threat to your operations. In a world where every dollar counts and budgets are tight, surprises in incident response costs can divert funds from other essential projects, delay strategic initiatives, or even impact your ability to meet payroll.

But it doesn’t need to be this way.

Below, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about cloud incident response costs and how to reduce your fees (and response time) by partnering with Airiam and ThreatLocker.

Why You Need an Incident Response Solution

A robust incident response (IR) plan used to be a nice-to-have, but it’s downright essential in today’s fast-evolving digital security landscape. Your incident response plan outlines the step-by-step process for how you’ll counteract and recover from cyber-attacks.

Rapid response isn’t negotiable. You need to act quickly (and thoroughly) to safeguard sensitive customer data, maintain trust, and provide continuous business operations. Any delay in your incident response could threaten the livelihood of your business.

However, that doesn’t mean you should rush out the door and buy the most expensive, comprehensive coverage you can find. Traditional incident response billing could stick you with a bill as crippling as a cyber-attack, and that puts your business in the same precarious situation: unable to respond and recover.

Instead, you have to juggle two elements:

1. Building a thorough and reliable incident response plan
2. Guaranteeing your response plan can be implemented in a financially predictable manner

Fortunately, there’s a solution to help you with both: Airiam and ThreatLocker. Our partnership gives you top-notch defense with fixed incident response costs. Really.

Our promise: exceptional protection, predictable budgeting, and no overages. Ever.

The Challenge of Traditional Incident Response Billing

During a cyber crisis, expenses can skyrocket unpredictably. From extensive forensic investigations to recovery and remediation efforts, every hour of response could mean thousands of dollars added to your final bill. This unpredictability makes it exceptionally difficult for businesses to budget for cybersecurity, leaving you financially vulnerable in the wake of an incident.

That’s a double-whammy you literally can’t afford right now.

The partners you’ve chosen to protect your business will take care of the cyber threat, but they’ll leave you with a bill that’s just as operationally devastating.

Variable Costs and Overage Charges

Typically, incident response services bill based on the scope and severity of the incident, the resources deployed, and the hours dedicated to resolving the issue. This billing model might seem logical at first glance— after all, more severe incidents require more resources and effort to mitigate.

However, the inherent unpredictability of cyber threats means that businesses can rarely (if ever) accurately predict the severity of a potential incident—and, by extension, the cost of responding to it.

Overage charges come into play when an incident exceeds a predefined scope or time allocation, leading to additional fees that can significantly inflate the final bill. This is like trying to patch a leaking boat without knowing how big the next breach will be—you know you’ll need resources to fix it, but you can’t predict how much it will ultimately cost.

The Impact on Budgeting and Financial Planning

For businesses, this unpredictability is more than just a nuisance. It’s a risk factor.

Financial planning and budgeting rely on forecasting costs and allocating resources efficiently. When incident response costs can balloon without warning, businesses face the challenge of earmarking funds for an unpredictable and impactful threat.

This can lead to a precarious balancing act:

• Overestimate, and you tie up valuable resources that could be used elsewhere
• Underestimate, and you may not have enough to cover the costs

The potential for overage charges can also cause a hesitancy to promptly engage incident response services, potentially exacerbating an incident’s severity. Businesses might delay calling in experts to avoid incurring high costs, not realizing that their delay can lead to even greater financial and reputational damage in the long run.

Incident Response Costs: Fees You Should Expect

While the exact nature and scope of an incident will ultimately dictate the total cost, there are common expenses that businesses should anticipate. Here’s a breakdown of specific costs you might incur during the incident response process:

• Initial Consultation and Assessment Fees: Many incident response services charge for the initial consultation and assessment phase. This is when the service provider evaluates the situation to understand the scope and scale of the breach or threat.
• Hourly Rates for Incident Response Teams: Incident response efforts are often billed on an hourly basis. This includes the time spent by cybersecurity experts analyzing the breach, containing the threat, eradicating the malware, and recovering compromised data.
• Forensic Analysis Charges: A detailed forensic investigation is critical for understanding how a breach occurred and for preventing future incidents. Given the specialized skills and tools required, forensic services can be a significant part of the incident response costs.
• Data Recovery and System Restoration Fees: Following a cyberattack, especially in cases of ransomware, significant effort may be needed to recover lost data and restore systems to their original state. These services are charged based on the complexity and volume of data affected.
• Additional Support and Consulting Fees: Post-incident, businesses may need ongoing support to strengthen their cybersecurity posture, implement new security measures, or comply with regulatory requirements. Consulting services for these purposes will incur additional fees.
• Overage Charges: Exceeding the allocated time or scope of services can result in overage charges, significantly increasing the total cost of incident response.

Through our partnership with ThreatLocker, we aim to address this challenge, offering businesses a transparent and predictable cost structure that eliminates surprises and allows for better financial planning and resilience in the face of cyber threats.

How Airiam and ThreatLocker Help Reduce Your Incident Response Fees

Our partnership with ThreatLocker gives your business more than just top-notch defense against cyber threats—you also get a strategic approach to managing your incident response costs. Together, we offer a layered defense strategy that responds to incidents more efficiently and actively works to prevent them (reducing the potential costs associated with cyber threats):

• Preventive Approach: ThreatLocker’s technology is designed to stop unauthorized applications and processes before they can execute, reducing the risk of malware or ransomware infiltrating your systems. This preventive measure means that incidents requiring a full-scale response are less likely, potentially lowering your overall incident response costs.
• Rapid Containment: In the event of a breach, the combined capabilities of Airiam and ThreatLocker ensure rapid containment. ThreatLocker’s precise control over applications and data access allows for quick isolation of threats, minimizing the spread and impact. This quick action limits the incident’s scope, reducing the hours and resources needed for resolution.
• Enhanced Visibility and Control: With ThreatLocker’s granular visibility into application and data access across your network, Airiam’s incident response teams can quickly identify and neutralize threats. This level of insight speeds up the forensic analysis and recovery process, reducing the time and cost associated with incident response.
• Predictable Budgeting: Perhaps the most significant advantage of the Airiam and ThreatLocker partnership is the predictability it brings to your cybersecurity budgeting. By capping incident response costs and eliminating overage charges, we ensure that your financial planning remains intact, even in the face of unexpected cyber incidents. This predictability is a game-changer, allowing your business to allocate its cybersecurity budgets more effectively and confidently.

Secure Your Company (and Your Budget) with Airiam and ThreatLocker

Cyber threats aren’t just evolving—they’re escalating in frequency and severity. Proactive and reactive cybersecurity are essential components of a comprehensive cyber resilience plan, but you can’t neglect a critical part of operating your business: financial predictability.

Airiam and ThreatLocker help you confidently plan your cybersecurity budget, knowing that your expenses are capped and there are no hidden fees or overage charges. This predictability isn’t good for your peace of mind—it’s good for your bottom line. It empowers you to tackle threats immediately, allocate resources more efficiently, and ultimately focus on what you do best: running your business.