LevelBlue has been named a Representative Service Provider in the Gartner® Market Guide for Cybersecurity Incident Response Retainer Services (CIRR), marking the fifth consecutive time the company has been included in the report. We believe this continued recognition reflects LevelBlue’s ongoing focus on supporting organizations across the full lifecycle of incident readiness, response, and recovery.
More importantly, the report reinforces a broader shift happening across the market: incident response is no longer a reactive, point-in-time capability. It is becoming a foundational component of enterprise cyber resilience programs.
A Market Shift from Reactive Response to Continuous Readiness
According to Gartner, “Cybersecurity incident response retainer (CIRR) services are widely adopted and are a core element of cyber resilience.” At the same time, cyber insurance requirements and board-level expectations are driving organizations to formalize their approach to incident response. Gartner notes that “Cyber insurance policies typically require organizations to have a CIRR,” further accelerating adoption. This shift is changing how organizations think about incident response. Rather than activating external support only during a crisis, enterprises are building ongoing relationships that ensure they are prepared before an incident occurs, aligned during response, and positioned to recover quickly afterward.
Why Incident Response Is Expanding Beyond the SOC
The role of incident response has expanded well beyond the security operations center. Gartner discusses that procurement and delivery of these services now involve a broader set of stakeholders, including legal, finance, insurers, and communications teams.
In practice, this means organizations must coordinate across:
- Technical teams responsible for detection and containment
- Legal counsel and breach coaches managing privilege and compliance
- Insurance providers and carriers influencing response workflows
- Communications teams responsible for brand and stakeholder messaging
This level of complexity requires more than technical expertise. It requires an operating model that can align stakeholders before, during, and after an incident.
From Retainer to Resilience: What Organizations Need Now
Gartner defines CIRR services as “proactive and reactive services that provide 24/7 incident response capabilities, including investigation, containment and eradication.”
But we feel leading organizations are moving beyond baseline response capabilities and focusing on how these services deliver continuous value.
Effective incident readiness and response now includes:
- Proactive preparedness: tabletop exercises, simulations, and maturity assessments that identify gaps before an incident occurs
- Coordinated response: rapid investigation, containment, eradication, and recovery across distributed environments
- Cross-functional alignment: integration with legal, insurance, and communications stakeholders
- Post-incident improvement: structured recovery and lessons learned to strengthen resilience over time
How LevelBlue Supports the Full Incident Lifecycle
LevelBlue’s Incident Readiness and Response approach is designed to support this full lifecycle, combining proactive planning, real-time response, and post-incident recovery into a continuous operating model.
This includes:
Proactive Readiness
LevelBlue works with organizations to prepare for incidents before they occur, through executive tabletop exercises, technical simulations, response plan development, and maturity assessments. These services help identify gaps, align stakeholders, and establish clear response protocols.
Coordinated Response
During an incident, LevelBlue provides rapid response capabilities spanning investigation, containment, eradication, and recovery. Teams are equipped to operate across hybrid and complex environments, including cloud, endpoint, network, and identity.
Cyber Insurance Alignment
As cyber insurance becomes more tightly integrated into incident response, LevelBlue supports organizations through established relationships across more than 50 insurance panels. This enables coordination with carriers, breach coaches, and other stakeholders throughout the incident lifecycle, helping reduce friction and accelerate response timelines.
Support for Complex and Critical Environments
LevelBlue brings experience across operational technology (OT), industrial control systems (ICS), and cyber-physical systems (CPS), supporting organizations in critical infrastructure and highly specialized environments where response requirements differ significantly from traditional IT environments.
Continuous Improvement
Following an incident, LevelBlue helps organizations recover, assess impact, and implement improvements to reduce risk and strengthen resilience moving forward.
A Market That Continues to Evolve
Gartner notes that CIRR services “help organizations prepare for and respond to cyber incidents” and “mitigates business harm, reduces costs, improves regulatory compliance, speeds recovery and reduces downtime.” As the threat landscape continues to evolve and attackers operate with increasing speed and sophistication, the window between exposure and impact continues to shrink. Organizations can no longer rely on reactive response alone. Incident readiness and response must be continuous, coordinated, and embedded into broader business operations.
Looking Ahead
The inclusion of LevelBlue in this year’s Market Guide reflects its continued participation in a market that is becoming central to how organizations prepare for and manage cyber risk.
As incident response retainers evolve into long-term resilience partnerships, organizations will continue to prioritize providers that can deliver not only technical response, but also the coordination, readiness, and operational alignment required to navigate today’s threat landscape.
