Incident Response Training

Incident Response Training for Raleigh-Durham Businesses

When a breach happens, every minute counts. Petronella Technology Group delivers NIST SP 800-61-aligned incident response training that prepares your team to detect, contain, and recover from cyberattacks before they become business-ending events. Serving the Research Triangle since 2002.

Schedule IR Training Call 919-348-4912

What Is Incident Response Training?

Incident response training is structured preparation that equips your organization's personnel to handle cybersecurity events methodically and effectively. Unlike general security awareness programs that teach employees to recognize phishing emails or use strong passwords, incident response training focuses on what happens after a security control fails and an adversary gains a foothold inside your network.

The discipline is grounded in NIST Special Publication 800-61 Revision 2, the Computer Security Incident Handling Guide published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This framework defines incident response as a six-phase lifecycle: Preparation, Detection and Analysis, Containment, Eradication, Recovery, and Post-Incident Activity. Each phase requires specific technical skills, communication protocols, and decision-making authority that must be established and practiced before an actual event occurs.

Effective incident response training goes beyond reading a playbook. It involves realistic scenario-based exercises where participants practice triage under pressure, make containment decisions with incomplete information, coordinate across departments, and communicate with stakeholders ranging from legal counsel to law enforcement. The SANS Institute's incident response methodology reinforces this approach, emphasizing that organizations with practiced response teams resolve incidents 74 percent faster than those without formal training.

At Petronella Technology Group, our incident response training programs are built on direct experience. CEO Craig Petronella is a Licensed Digital Forensic Examiner who has investigated hundreds of breaches across healthcare organizations, defense contractors, financial institutions, and law firms throughout the Triangle. Our training content reflects real attack patterns, real containment failures, and real lessons learned from the field.

Why Incident Response Training Matters

The financial and operational consequences of an unprepared response to a security incident are severe and well documented. Organizations that lack a tested incident response plan consistently experience longer breach lifecycles, higher remediation costs, and greater regulatory exposure than those with mature IR capabilities.

$4.88M
Average cost of a data breach globally (IBM 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report)
292 days
Average time to identify and contain a breach without IR readiness
$1.49M
Average savings for organizations with tested incident response plans
63%
Of breaches involve compromised credentials requiring rapid containment

These numbers are not abstractions. For a fifty-person medical practice in Raleigh handling electronic protected health information, a ransomware event without a practiced response plan can mean weeks of downtime, six-figure ransom demands, mandatory HIPAA breach notifications to every affected patient, and potential Office for Civil Rights enforcement actions. For a defense contractor near Fort Liberty pursuing CMMC Level 2 certification, a poorly handled incident involving Controlled Unclassified Information can result in loss of contract eligibility and debarment from federal procurement.

The dwell time problem is particularly acute. The longer an attacker maintains access to your network without detection, the more data they exfiltrate, the more lateral movement they achieve, and the more expensive remediation becomes. IR training directly addresses dwell time by teaching your team to recognize indicators of compromise early, escalate correctly, and execute containment procedures that sever the attacker's access before they reach their objectives.

Beyond cost avoidance, trained incident response capability is increasingly a contractual and regulatory requirement. CMMC Level 2 requires documented incident response capability under practice IR.L2-3.6.1. HIPAA's Security Rule mandates response and reporting procedures. PCI DSS Requirement 12.10 requires a formal incident response plan that is tested annually. The FTC Safeguards Rule, which now covers a broad range of financial institutions, explicitly requires incident response planning. Organizations that cannot demonstrate trained, tested IR readiness face compliance gaps regardless of how strong their preventive controls are.

Our Incident Response Training Programs

Petronella Technology Group offers five distinct IR training programs, each designed for a specific audience and operational context. All programs are customized to your industry, regulatory environment, and existing security infrastructure.

Tabletop Exercises

Facilitated discussion-based simulations where your team walks through realistic breach scenarios step by step. We present an evolving attack narrative, including ransomware deployment, data exfiltration, or insider threat scenarios, and your team makes real-time decisions about containment, communication, and escalation. Each exercise tests your IR plan against specific attack vectors relevant to your industry and concludes with a detailed gap analysis report.

Live Simulations

Hands-on technical exercises conducted in a controlled environment that replicates your production network. Participants detect simulated attacks using your actual SIEM and EDR tools, perform network isolation, collect volatile forensic evidence, and execute recovery procedures. Live simulations expose muscle-memory gaps that tabletop exercises cannot reveal and provide measurable performance metrics for each participant.

Executive Briefings

Targeted training for C-suite leadership, board members, and senior management who must make high-stakes decisions during incidents without deep technical backgrounds. Topics include breach disclosure obligations, cyber insurance activation, regulatory notification timelines, public communications strategy, and the legal implications of containment decisions. Executives leave understanding their specific roles and decision authority during an active incident.

Technical IR Training

Deep-dive technical training for IT staff and SOC analysts covering forensic evidence preservation, memory acquisition, disk imaging, network traffic analysis, log correlation, malware triage, and chain of custody procedures. We teach your technical team to use tools including Wireshark, Volatility, KAPE, and your existing EDR/SIEM stack to perform initial triage and forensic collection without destroying evidence.

Compliance-Specific IR

Training programs aligned to specific regulatory frameworks including CMMC, HIPAA, NIST 800-171, PCI DSS, and SOC 2. Each session covers the IR requirements unique to that framework, the documentation and evidence you must maintain, notification timelines, and the specific procedures auditors and assessors expect to see demonstrated. Ideal for organizations preparing for compliance assessments.

NIST Incident Response Framework Coverage

Our training curriculum maps directly to the six phases defined in NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 2, ensuring your team develops comprehensive capability across the entire incident lifecycle. Each phase includes hands-on exercises, decision trees, and documented procedures tailored to your organizational structure.

Phase 1

Preparation

Building the foundation before incidents occur. We help you establish your IR team roster with defined roles (Incident Commander, Technical Lead, Communications Lead, Legal Liaison), develop and document response playbooks for your most likely attack scenarios, configure logging and monitoring to ensure forensic visibility, and establish communication channels that function when primary systems are compromised. Preparation also covers relationships with external resources including law enforcement contacts, outside counsel, and forensic retainer agreements.

Phase 2

Detection and Analysis

Recognizing that something has gone wrong and understanding what you are dealing with. Training covers alert triage methodology, indicator of compromise identification, log analysis across endpoint, network, and cloud sources, determining incident scope and severity, and the critical distinction between false positives and genuine threats. Your team learns to classify incidents by category and severity using a defined taxonomy that drives escalation procedures.

Phase 3

Containment

Stopping the bleeding without destroying evidence. We train both short-term containment (network isolation, account disablement, firewall rule changes) and long-term containment strategies (building clean systems while maintaining compromised ones for forensic analysis). Participants learn the containment decision matrix: when to pull the plug versus when to monitor the attacker to understand the full scope of compromise before tipping your hand.

Phase 4

Eradication

Removing the threat from your environment completely. Training covers root cause identification, malware removal verification, backdoor hunting, persistence mechanism elimination, and validation that the attacker's access has been fully severed. We emphasize that eradication without understanding the root cause leads to reinfection, and teach your team to verify eradication through controlled monitoring before declaring the threat eliminated.

Phase 5

Recovery

Restoring operations safely and verifying system integrity. Your team practices restoring from validated backups, rebuilding compromised systems, implementing additional monitoring during the recovery window, performing validation testing before returning systems to production, and establishing heightened alert postures during the post-recovery period when reinfection risk is highest.

Phase 6

Lessons Learned

The most neglected and arguably most valuable phase. We facilitate structured post-incident reviews that identify what worked, what failed, and what must change. Training covers root cause analysis techniques, timeline reconstruction, gap documentation, IR plan updates, and the process for converting incident findings into preventive controls. Every incident is an opportunity to harden your defenses, but only if lessons are captured and acted upon systematically.

Who Needs Incident Response Training?

Every organization that operates networked computer systems faces incident response obligations, but certain categories of Triangle businesses face heightened requirements and elevated risk profiles.

  • Healthcare organizations and medical practices handling electronic protected health information under HIPAA. The HIPAA Security Rule at 45 CFR 164.308(a)(6) requires security incident procedures, and OCR expects documented, tested response capabilities during audits. Triangle healthcare providers serving the Duke Health, UNC Health, and WakeMed ecosystems are frequent targets.
  • Defense contractors and subcontractors near Fort Liberty and Research Triangle Park handling Controlled Unclassified Information under DFARS 252.204-7012 and CMMC Level 2. Incident reporting to the DoD Cyber Crime Center within 72 hours is a contractual mandate, and CMMC assessment requires demonstrated IR capability.
  • Financial services firms and CPA practices subject to the FTC Safeguards Rule, PCI DSS, and state banking regulations. The revised Safeguards Rule requires a written incident response plan, and PCI DSS 4.0 mandates annual IR plan testing.
  • Law firms and legal practices with ethical obligations to protect client confidentiality. A breach involving privileged attorney-client communications creates both regulatory exposure and malpractice liability. North Carolina State Bar ethics opinions increasingly address data security obligations.
  • Technology companies and SaaS providers that process customer data under SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, or CCPA requirements. SOC 2 Trust Service Criteria CC7.3 through CC7.5 require incident response, management, and remediation capabilities.
  • Executive leadership and board members who bear fiduciary responsibility for cybersecurity governance. SEC cyber disclosure rules now require prompt material incident disclosure, making board-level IR awareness a governance necessity, not a technical nicety.
  • IT departments and managed service providers who serve as the first line of response. Technical staff who have not practiced forensic evidence preservation routinely destroy critical evidence during well-intentioned cleanup efforts.
  • Any Raleigh-Durham business that cannot afford extended downtime. If your operations depend on email, databases, EHR systems, or cloud services, you need a practiced plan for when those systems are compromised.

Compliance Frameworks Requiring Incident Response

Incident response is not optional under most regulatory frameworks. The following compliance standards applicable to Triangle businesses contain explicit IR requirements that our training programs address.

CMMC 2.0

Practice IR.L2-3.6.1 requires establishing an operational incident handling capability. Practice IR.L2-3.6.2 requires tracking, documenting, and reporting incidents. CMMC Level 2 assessment includes IR capability verification.

HIPAA

Security Rule 164.308(a)(6) mandates security incident procedures. Breach notification under 164.404 requires individual notice within 60 days. HHS wall of shame reporting applies to breaches affecting 500+ individuals.

NIST 800-171

Security Requirement 3.6.1 requires establishing an operational incident handling capability for organizational systems. Requirement 3.6.2 requires tracking, documenting, and reporting incidents to designated officials and authorities.

PCI DSS 4.0

Requirement 12.10 mandates a formal incident response plan that is activated immediately upon suspected compromise. The plan must be tested at least annually and personnel must be trained on their responsibilities.

SOC 2 Type II

Common Criteria CC7.3 through CC7.5 require that the organization detects security events, responds to identified incidents, and remediates identified vulnerabilities with documented, repeatable processes.

FTC Safeguards

The revised Safeguards Rule (effective June 2023) requires financial institutions to develop a written incident response plan addressing goals, internal processes, escalation, and remediation.

Why Train with Petronella Technology Group

Petronella Technology Group has operated from Raleigh since 2002, maintaining BBB accreditation since 2003 and serving more than 2,500 clients across the Research Triangle and beyond. Our incident response training is not assembled from generic slide decks. It is built on direct breach investigation experience accumulated over more than two decades of hands-on forensic work.

CEO Craig Petronella brings a unique combination of credentials to every training engagement. As a Licensed Digital Forensic Examiner, he has conducted forensic investigations for law firms, healthcare organizations, and federal contractors. As a CMMC Certified Registered Practitioner, he understands the specific IR requirements that defense contractors must meet. His MIT certification in cybersecurity, AI, and compliance ensures that training content reflects current threat intelligence and emerging attack patterns, not yesterday's threats.

Craig is an Amazon number-one best-selling author of "How HIPAA Can Crush Your Medical Practice" and "The Ultimate Guide to CMMC," providing the regulatory depth that compliance-driven organizations require. He has been featured on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and WRAL, and serves as an expert witness for law firms in cybercrime and compliance cases. This combination of forensic expertise, compliance knowledge, and courtroom-tested credibility translates directly into training content that prepares your team for real-world scenarios.

Many organizations retain PTG on an ongoing basis so that our team already understands their network architecture, personnel, and compliance requirements. When we deliver IR training, the scenarios, playbooks, and procedures we develop are specific to your environment, not generic templates that require significant adaptation before they become useful.

From Ransomware to Recovery

Watch how organizations can prepare for and recover from ransomware attacks with proper incident response planning.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should incident response training be conducted?
NIST SP 800-61 recommends conducting IR exercises at least annually, and most compliance frameworks align with this minimum. However, best practice calls for quarterly tabletop exercises and annual full-scale simulations. Organizations in highly regulated industries such as healthcare and defense contracting, or those that have experienced a recent incident, should increase frequency. PTG recommends annual technical training for IR team members, quarterly tabletop exercises that rotate through different attack scenarios, and immediate plan reviews after any actual incident or significant infrastructure change.
What is the difference between a tabletop exercise and a live simulation?
A tabletop exercise is a discussion-based walkthrough where participants talk through their responses to a hypothetical scenario. No actual systems are affected. A live simulation involves hands-on technical activity in a controlled environment where participants detect, contain, and remediate simulated attacks using real tools and processes. Tabletop exercises are excellent for testing communication, decision-making, and plan logic. Live simulations test technical execution, tool proficiency, and team coordination under pressure. Most organizations benefit from a combination of both, starting with tabletop exercises to identify plan gaps and progressing to live simulations to build operational muscle memory.
Can IR training be customized for our specific industry and compliance requirements?
Every PTG incident response training engagement is customized to the client's industry, regulatory environment, and technology stack. For healthcare organizations, scenarios involve ePHI exposure, HIPAA breach notification timelines, and OCR reporting obligations. For defense contractors, exercises focus on CUI spillage, DFARS 72-hour reporting to DC3, and CMMC assessment evidence requirements. For financial services, training addresses PCI forensic investigation protocols and FTC Safeguards Rule documentation. We review your existing IR plan, network architecture, and compliance obligations before designing scenario content and exercises.
Does PTG provide actual incident response services, or just training?
PTG provides both. Our digital forensics and incident response practice handles active breach containment, forensic investigation, evidence preservation, root cause analysis, and remediation. Craig Petronella's Licensed Digital Forensic Examiner credential and our forensic lab capabilities support full-spectrum IR services. Many clients establish a retainer relationship so that PTG already understands their environment when an incident occurs, reducing response time from hours to minutes. Training and active response services are complementary: trained teams handle initial triage effectively while PTG provides advanced forensic and containment support.
How long does a typical IR training engagement take?
Engagement length depends on scope and format. An executive briefing typically runs two to three hours. A single tabletop exercise takes half a day including the debrief. Technical IR training for IT staff spans two to three days for comprehensive coverage of forensics, containment, and recovery procedures. A full IR readiness program that includes plan development, multiple tabletop exercises, technical training, and a live simulation typically spans four to eight weeks with sessions scheduled to minimize operational disruption. We design engagement timelines around your operational constraints.
What if we do not have an incident response plan yet?
Many organizations come to PTG without a formal IR plan in place, and that is a perfectly valid starting point. We offer IR plan development as a standalone service or as the first phase of a training engagement. The plan development process includes defining your IR team structure and roles, creating playbooks for your highest-probability attack scenarios, establishing communication templates and escalation procedures, defining evidence preservation protocols, and documenting regulatory notification requirements specific to your compliance obligations. Once the plan is documented, we use it as the foundation for tabletop exercises and training.
Is remote IR training effective, or does it need to be conducted on-site?
Both formats are effective when properly designed. On-site training at your Raleigh-Durham location offers the advantage of using your actual physical environment and allows for live simulation exercises on your network infrastructure. Remote training is effective for tabletop exercises, executive briefings, and organizations with distributed teams. We have conducted effective remote IR training for organizations across North Carolina and beyond. For comprehensive programs, we typically recommend an initial on-site session for plan development and technical assessment, followed by a combination of on-site and remote sessions for ongoing exercises.
How does IR training help with CMMC assessment readiness?
CMMC Level 2 includes two incident response practices under the IR domain: IR.L2-3.6.1 (establish an operational incident handling capability) and IR.L2-3.6.2 (track, document, and report incidents). Assessors evaluate whether your organization has a documented IR plan, defined roles and responsibilities, trained personnel, tested procedures, and evidence of incident handling activity. PTG's IR training generates the artifacts and demonstrated capability that assessors require: training records, exercise after-action reports, plan documentation, and evidence that your team can execute IR procedures. For defense contractors near Fort Liberty and throughout the Triangle, this training directly supports CMMC assessment objectives.
What does IR training cost?
Training costs vary based on scope, format, and organization size. A single tabletop exercise for a small team starts at a fraction of what a single day of breach-related downtime costs most organizations. Comprehensive multi-week programs that include plan development, multiple exercises, and technical training represent a larger investment but deliver proportionally greater readiness. Contact PTG at 919-348-4912 or through our contact page for a customized quote. We provide transparent, fixed-price proposals so you know exactly what to expect before engagement begins.
What real-world attack scenarios do you cover in training exercises?
Our scenario library covers the attack patterns most commonly encountered by Triangle businesses: ransomware deployment through phishing and remote access exploitation, business email compromise targeting wire transfers and sensitive data, insider threat scenarios involving data exfiltration by departing employees, supply chain compromise through third-party vendor access, credential stuffing and brute force attacks against cloud services, and advanced persistent threat activity targeting intellectual property. Each scenario is adapted to your industry context. A healthcare tabletop might simulate a ransomware attack encrypting EHR systems during peak patient hours, while a defense contractor exercise might involve discovery of unauthorized CUI access by a foreign IP address.

Prepare Your Team Before the Next Breach

The time to practice incident response is before an incident occurs. Contact Petronella Technology Group to schedule customized IR training for your organization. BBB accredited since 2003. Serving Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and the Research Triangle since 2002.

919-348-4912 Schedule IR Training

5540 Centerview Dr., Suite 200, Raleigh, NC 27606