Cyber Incident Response and Resilience Auditing Training Course

Course Introduction

The Cyber Incident Response and Resilience Auditing Training Course provides a comprehensive and practical framework for auditing an organisation’s ability to prevent, detect, respond to, recover from, and learn from cybersecurity incidents. Participants will develop the knowledge required to evaluate incident response governance, preparedness, detection capabilities, escalation procedures, crisis management, recovery controls, business continuity arrangements, and resilience practices across increasingly complex digital environments.

Cyber incidents can disrupt critical operations, compromise sensitive information, create financial losses, interrupt essential services, and damage stakeholder confidence. This course examines how auditors can assess whether organisations have established effective structures for managing cyber incidents before, during, and after an event. Particular attention is given to incident response policies, roles and responsibilities, response plans, communication arrangements, incident classification, escalation thresholds, evidence preservation, and management oversight.

Participants will learn how to conduct risk-based audits of cybersecurity incident response capabilities across networks, endpoints, cloud services, enterprise applications, third-party platforms, remote working environments, and critical infrastructure. The programme addresses the relationship between preventive security controls and response readiness, helping auditors determine whether security monitoring, logging, detection, alert management, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident activities operate as an integrated resilience capability.

The course also focuses strongly on business resilience and recovery. Participants will examine business impact analysis, recovery objectives, backup strategies, disaster recovery arrangements, system restoration, crisis communications, alternative operating arrangements, dependency management, and resilience testing. They will learn how to evaluate whether recovery plans are realistic, regularly exercised, adequately documented, and capable of supporting critical business services during major cyber disruptions.

Advanced audit techniques are incorporated throughout the programme, including incident data analytics, log review, control testing, tabletop exercise assessment, forensic evidence considerations, threat-informed auditing, continuous monitoring, and resilience maturity assessment. Participants will explore emerging challenges such as ransomware, supply chain compromise, cloud outages, identity attacks, artificial intelligence-enabled threats, destructive attacks, and increasingly interconnected digital ecosystems, with emphasis on their implications for audit scope and assurance.

By the end of the programme, participants will be better equipped to plan and execute cyber incident response and resilience audits, assess the effectiveness of preparedness and recovery capabilities, identify control gaps, evaluate evidence, develop actionable findings, and communicate resilience risks to senior management and governance bodies. The course supports auditors and assurance professionals in moving beyond compliance-based reviews toward practical assessments of whether organisations can withstand, respond to, recover from, and learn from significant cyber events.

Duration

10 days

Who Should Attend

• Internal auditors responsible for assessing cybersecurity incident response and organisational resilience capabilities.

• IT auditors evaluating incident management, disaster recovery, technology controls, and cyber resilience arrangements.

• Cybersecurity professionals responsible for incident response, security operations, detection, containment, and recovery.

• Risk management professionals assessing cyber risks, business disruption scenarios, resilience capabilities, and recovery readiness.

• Information security managers responsible for developing and maintaining cyber incident response programmes.

• Business continuity and disaster recovery professionals involved in technology resilience planning and testing.

• Compliance and governance professionals evaluating cybersecurity preparedness against organisational and regulatory requirements.

• Audit managers and assurance leaders responsible for cyber resilience reviews and technology risk reporting.

• Security operations personnel seeking a stronger understanding of audit expectations for incident detection and response processes.

• Crisis management professionals responsible for coordinating organisational responses to major technology disruptions.

• Technology and infrastructure managers responsible for recovery, backup, availability, and resilient IT operations.

• Third-party risk professionals assessing cyber incident response and resilience capabilities across critical service providers.

• Fraud and forensic investigation professionals supporting cyber incident investigations and post-incident assurance.

• Professionals seeking advanced practical skills in auditing cybersecurity response, recovery, resilience, and continuous improvement programmes.

Course Objectives

• Develop a comprehensive understanding of cyber incident response, technology resilience, recovery governance, and the auditor’s role in evaluating organisational preparedness.

• Apply risk-based audit methodologies to assess cyber incident response capabilities across infrastructure, applications, cloud services, endpoints, networks, and critical business processes.

• Evaluate incident response policies, procedures, roles, responsibilities, escalation criteria, communication protocols, incident classification, and governance arrangements.

• Assess the effectiveness of cybersecurity monitoring, logging, detection, alert management, threat intelligence, triage, and incident identification capabilities.

• Examine containment, eradication, recovery, system restoration, evidence preservation, and post-incident activities to determine whether response processes are effective and controlled.

• Evaluate business impact analysis, critical service identification, recovery time objectives, recovery point objectives, technology dependencies, and resilience priorities.

• Assess backup, restoration, disaster recovery, high availability, redundancy, alternative processing, and other technical controls supporting cyber resilience and operational continuity.

• Apply audit techniques to evaluate tabletop exercises, simulations, penetration testing, recovery testing, crisis exercises, lessons learned, and improvement actions.

• Use data analytics and technology-enabled audit procedures to analyse incident records, security alerts, system logs, response metrics, recovery information, and resilience performance indicators.

• Evaluate cyber risks arising from ransomware, supply chain compromise, cloud dependencies, identity attacks, artificial intelligence, remote working, and other emerging threat scenarios.

• Develop evidence-based audit findings, risk assessments, recommendations, management actions, and assurance reports that clearly communicate weaknesses in incident response and resilience.

• Strengthen continuous assurance by establishing monitoring, maturity assessment, remediation tracking, lessons-learned processes, and resilience improvement mechanisms following cyber events.

Comprehensive Course Outline

Module 1: Foundations of Cyber Incident Response and Resilience Auditing

• Principles, objectives, scope, terminology, lifecycle stages, and professional responsibilities associated with cyber incident response and resilience auditing.

• Relationship between cybersecurity prevention, detection, incident response, business continuity, disaster recovery, crisis management, and organisational resilience.

• Common cyber incident scenarios including ransomware, credential compromise, malware, data breaches, service disruption, insider activity, and supply chain attacks.

• Audit perspectives on preparedness, response capability, recovery effectiveness, resilience maturity, governance expectations, and evidence-based assurance.

Module 2: Cyber Incident Response Governance and Management Frameworks

• Incident response governance structures, executive accountability, security leadership, response teams, escalation arrangements, and management oversight.

• Incident response policies, standards, procedures, playbooks, roles, responsibilities, authority levels, and decision-making frameworks.

• Integration of cybersecurity incident management with enterprise risk management, business continuity, crisis management, internal audit, and compliance functions.

• Evaluating response governance effectiveness, accountability mechanisms, performance reporting, resource allocation, and continuous programme improvement.

Module 3: Cyber Risk Assessment and Incident Response Audit Planning

• Identifying cyber threats, critical assets, business services, technology dependencies, vulnerabilities, threat scenarios, and potential disruption consequences.

• Developing cyber incident response audit universes, risk assessments, engagement objectives, audit scopes, control matrices, and evidence requirements.

• Assessing inherent risk, control risk, residual risk, incident likelihood, potential impact, recovery complexity, and organisational criticality.

• Designing audit programmes, testing strategies, sampling approaches, stakeholder responsibilities, timelines, and specialist resource requirements.

Module 4: Incident Detection, Monitoring and Security Operations Auditing

• Evaluating security monitoring, event collection, logging, alert generation, detection rules, threat intelligence, and security operations centre capabilities.

• Auditing endpoint, network, identity, cloud, application, database, and infrastructure telemetry for coverage, integrity, retention, and investigative usefulness.

• Assessing alert triage, prioritisation, false-positive management, escalation, incident classification, and response-time performance.

• Evaluating continuous monitoring capabilities and identifying gaps that could delay detection, investigation, containment, or escalation of cyber incidents.

Module 5: Incident Triage, Investigation and Response Procedures

• Auditing incident intake, validation, classification, severity assessment, prioritisation, assignment, escalation, and case management processes.

• Evaluating incident response playbooks for malware, ransomware, compromised accounts, data breaches, insider threats, denial-of-service events, and system compromise.

• Assessing containment, eradication, remediation, system isolation, credential management, vulnerability treatment, and restoration decision-making controls.

• Reviewing incident documentation, response timelines, evidence records, decision logs, communications, approvals, and lessons learned for completeness and reliability.

Module 6: Digital Evidence, Forensics and Incident Investigation Assurance

• Identifying digital evidence sources including endpoints, network devices, cloud services, applications, databases, email, authentication systems, and security platforms.

• Evaluating evidence preservation, chain of custody, integrity verification, forensic readiness, acquisition procedures, and secure evidence storage.

• Assessing forensic investigation processes used to determine attack vectors, affected systems, compromised accounts, data exposure, and incident timelines.

• Auditing coordination between incident responders, forensic specialists, internal audit, legal teams, law enforcement, and other investigation stakeholders.

Module 7: Cyber Crisis Management and Incident Communications

• Evaluating cyber crisis management structures, crisis teams, command arrangements, decision authorities, escalation thresholds, and executive involvement.

• Auditing internal and external communication procedures covering employees, customers, regulators, suppliers, partners, media, and other relevant stakeholders.

• Assessing crisis communication plans, contact information, communication channels, approval processes, message consistency, and confidentiality controls.

• Evaluating executive tabletop exercises, crisis simulations, decision-making under uncertainty, stakeholder coordination, and communication lessons learned.

Module 8: Business Continuity and Cyber Resilience Auditing

• Assessing business impact analysis, critical services, recovery priorities, dependencies, maximum tolerable disruption, and cyber-specific continuity requirements.

• Evaluating business continuity plans, alternative operating arrangements, manual workarounds, critical personnel, facilities, suppliers, and technology dependencies.

• Auditing resilience capabilities for essential business services affected by system compromise, data unavailability, infrastructure disruption, or prolonged technology outages.

• Testing whether continuity arrangements are realistic, current, documented, communicated, exercised, and aligned with changing business and technology environments.

Module 9: Disaster Recovery, Backup and System Restoration Auditing

• Evaluating disaster recovery strategies, recovery architectures, system redundancy, backup arrangements, restoration procedures, recovery priorities, and technology dependencies.

• Auditing backup frequency, retention, integrity, encryption, access controls, segregation, offline or immutable copies, and protection against destructive cyber events.

• Assessing recovery time objectives, recovery point objectives, restoration sequencing, application dependencies, infrastructure recovery, and data restoration controls.

• Reviewing disaster recovery exercises, restoration tests, failed recovery attempts, corrective actions, evidence of recoverability, and management oversight.

Module 10: Ransomware, Supply Chain and Emerging Cyber Incident Risks

• Auditing organisational preparedness for ransomware, destructive malware, extortion attacks, credential theft, data exfiltration, and disruptive cyber events.

• Evaluating third-party and supply chain incident risks involving managed service providers, cloud providers, software suppliers, technology partners, and critical vendors.

• Assessing cyber incident dependencies associated with cloud concentration, remote working, interconnected systems, APIs, software updates, and digital ecosystems.

• Addressing emerging threats involving artificial intelligence-enabled attacks, deepfakes, automated social engineering, identity abuse, and increasingly sophisticated attack techniques.

Module 11: Cyber Resilience Testing, Exercises and Assurance

• Auditing tabletop exercises, technical simulations, red-team activities, disaster recovery tests, crisis exercises, and integrated cyber resilience assessments.

• Evaluating exercise objectives, scenarios, participant coverage, assumptions, test evidence, performance measures, decision-making, and identified control weaknesses.

• Assessing whether exercise findings are translated into documented corrective actions, accountable owners, realistic deadlines, and measurable resilience improvements.

• Reviewing the quality of post-exercise reports, lessons learned, remediation validation, repeat testing, and management assurance over unresolved weaknesses.

Module 12: Third-Party, Cloud and Digital Ecosystem Resilience

• Evaluating supplier incident response capabilities, contractual requirements, notification obligations, service-level commitments, resilience provisions, and recovery responsibilities.

• Auditing cloud incident response arrangements, shared-responsibility models, provider logging, security monitoring, backup dependencies, and recovery capabilities.

• Assessing critical technology providers, outsourced services, SaaS applications, APIs, interconnected platforms, and concentration risks affecting organisational resilience.

• Evaluating third-party testing, assurance reports, incident history, contingency arrangements, exit planning, alternative providers, and dependency-reduction strategies.

Module 13: Cyber Incident Data Analytics and Continuous Monitoring

• Applying analytics to incident tickets, security alerts, response timelines, log records, vulnerability information, recovery data, and other operational datasets.

• Developing metrics for mean time to detect, respond, contain, recover, close, and remediate incidents while recognising the limitations of performance indicators.

• Using trend analysis, anomaly detection, visualisation, correlation, and continuous monitoring to identify recurring weaknesses and resilience degradation.

• Integrating automated assurance techniques with security operations, incident management platforms, risk systems, and audit processes to strengthen ongoing oversight.

Module 14: Cyber Resilience Maturity, Control Effectiveness and Remediation

• Assessing maturity of incident response, crisis management, business continuity, disaster recovery, forensic readiness, and resilience capabilities.

• Evaluating preventive, detective, responsive, corrective, and recovery controls according to design effectiveness and operating effectiveness.

• Performing root cause analysis on recurring incidents, delayed responses, failed recoveries, incomplete remediation, and persistent resilience weaknesses.

• Developing remediation plans, prioritising corrective actions, validating improvements, tracking residual risks, and escalating unresolved critical weaknesses.

Module 15: Cyber Incident Response Audit Reporting and Follow-Up

• Developing audit findings that connect observed conditions, control criteria, root causes, business consequences, cyber risks, supporting evidence, and practical recommendations.

• Communicating incident response and resilience weaknesses clearly to technical teams, executives, audit committees, risk functions, and governance bodies.

• Preparing assurance reports covering preparedness, detection, response, recovery, resilience, third-party dependencies, testing results, and management actions.

• Conducting follow-up reviews, validating remediation evidence, reassessing residual risk, tracking overdue actions, and providing ongoing assurance to stakeholders.

Module 16: Advanced Cyber Resilience Strategy and Future Assurance

• Developing integrated cyber resilience strategies that connect cybersecurity, incident response, business continuity, disaster recovery, crisis management, and enterprise risk management.

• Assessing continuous controls monitoring, automated response, threat-informed assurance, resilience analytics, digital twins, and technology-enabled audit approaches.

• Evaluating future resilience challenges arising from artificial intelligence, quantum-related risks, cloud concentration, autonomous systems, supply chain dependencies, and systemic digital disruption.

• Designing advanced audit strategies that promote organisational preparedness, adaptive response capability, rapid recovery, institutional learning, and sustained cyber resilience.

Training Approach

This course will be delivered by our skilled trainers who have vast knowledge and experience as expert professionals in the fields. The course is taught in English and through a mix of theory, practical activities, group discussion and case studies. Course manuals and additional training materials will be provided to the participants upon completion of the training.

Tailor-Made Course

This course can also be tailor-made to meet organization requirement. For further inquiries, please contact us on: Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com Tel: +254 721 331 808

Training Venue 

The training will be held at our Upskill Training Centre. We also offer training for a group (at a discount of 10% to 50%) at requested location all over the world. The Onsite course fee covers the course tuition, training materials, two break refreshments, buffet lunch, airport transfers, Upskill gift package, and guided tour.

Visa application, travel expenses, dinners, accommodation, insurance, and other personal expenses are catered by the participant

Certification

Participants will be issued with Upskill certificate upon completion of this course.

Airport Pickup and Accommodation

Airport pickup and accommodation is arranged upon request. For booking contact our Training Coordinator through Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com, +254 721 331 808

Terms of Payment:

Unless otherwise agreed between the two parties’ payment of the course fee should be done 3 working days before commencement of the training so as to enable us to prepare better.