Deciding whether to pay a ransomware demand is never straightforward. While the FBI publicly discourages payment to reduce incentives for attackers, the real cost often comes down to downtime, restoration capability, and hidden expenses such as regulatory fines, litigation, and operational disruption. High-profile cases show that the business impact goes far beyond the ransom itself.

Effective incident response (IR) goes beyond plans and playbooks. Learn how to embed IR into business-as-usual, leverage third-party support, run exercises, and continuously improve readiness to protect your organization, customers, and stakeholders.

Salesforce wasn’t hacked, but if you used the Salesloft integration, your customer data could be at risk. This breach is a wake-up call: third-party vendor risk matters for every business, big or small.

One of the most overlooked aspects of incident response is reporting. It’s not flashy like forensics or containment, but it is the thread that runs through every stage of an incident and across every audience that matters, from your technical team to regulators and even the board. When reporting is handled poorly, even the best technical response can unravel into confusion, miscommunication, and costly regulatory fallout. When it’s done well, however, reporting builds trust, maintains alignment across the organization, and demonstrates competence to external stakeholders. That’s why defining cadences, practicing playbooks, and ensuring both organizational and personal reporting discipline is critical, not just for compliance, but for turning response into resilience.

Executive reactions can make or break incident response. Learn how to manage roles, decisions, comms, and privilege for effective crisis leadership

Effective incident response needs more than tools. Learn how external partners, retainers, and clear coordination drive faster recovery and resilience.

Third-party vendors add value but also risk. Learn how to prepare for incidents with vendor visibility, data protection, and response coordination.

Continuing in our series on Incident Response, when an incident hits, speed matters. Not just how fast your team spots the problem—but how quickly you can act without creating more damage.

Every breach is unique, and the financial, operational, and reputational impact depends on countless nuanced factors.

SMBs have a hidden strength: smaller, less complex environments mean detection engineering can be focused and high-impact, without a massive budget or staff. The key is knowing which tools and telemetry sources deliver the biggest return on investment.

Breaches don’t care how big your security budget is or how many people you have on staff. When they happen, you need to be ready to scale your response quickly...or you risk making an already bad situation far worse.