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Arctic Wolf Incident Response
The worst time to find an incident responder is during the incident. The SLA and the rate should already be signed — Arctic Wolf Incident Response fixes the response SLA and the hourly rate before anything breaks — JumpStart for a 4-hour clock at $325 an hour, Incident360 for one incident covered from forensics to restoration.
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Same software. Better outcome — at a lower cost.
How it’s rated
Full scoreboard ↓Quick answer
The Arctic Wolf platform family
This page covers Arctic Wolf Incident Response — the JumpStart, Incident360 and Incident360 Plus retainers. The rest:
Quick facts
30-second orientation- Product
- Pre-agreed incident response retainers: JumpStart, Incident360 and Incident360 Plus
- Maker
- Privately held Arctic Wolf of Minnesota, in business since 2012 and run by CEO Nick Schneider
- Response SLA
- 4 hours on JumpStart, 3 hours on Incident360, 1 hour with the Rapid Response add-on
- Hourly rate
- $325 an hour for IR work under JumpStart; $295 an hour with Rapid Response
- Incident cover
- Incident360 pays for a single incident end to end, restoration capped at 30 hours
- Readiness
- IR Planner, runbooks and a Cyber Resilience Assessment; Plus adds three readiness touchpoints
- Retainer fee
- Not published; the hourly rates are the only public figures
- Bundles
- JumpStart sits in Security Operations Plus; Incident360 in the Cyber Resilience offering
- India
- Neither an Indian SOC nor Indian evidence storage is documented; Bengaluru does engineering
- In India via
- TechBag — retainer scoping, quote in INR with GST, IR plan workshop
Understand incident response retainers before you sign one
Most product pages skip this. We start here — so you buy a capability, not a buzzword.
What is an incident response retainer?
A contract signed before a breach that fixes who responds, how fast and at what rate.
Hiring a responder mid-breach vs a retainer signed in advance — the honest table
What consolidation actually replaces, dimension by dimension.
| Dimension | A responder hired mid-breach | Arctic Wolf Incident Response |
|---|---|---|
| Finding a responder | Searching for an IR firm while systems are down | A retained team on a contracted SLA |
| Agreeing the price | Rates negotiated in the middle of the crisis | $325 an hour fixed up front; $295 with Rapid Response |
| First hours | Staff wiping machines and losing evidence | Runbooks from the IR Planner, then forensics |
| Attacker contact | Executives replying to the ransom note | Responders run threat-actor communication |
| Getting back up | Restoration billed as a separate project | Up to 30 restoration hours in Incident360 |
| What it is NOT | — | Free, unlimited, or delivered from an India SOC |
The cheapest first step is the plan itself: fill in the IR Planner, name your decision-makers, and see which retainer tier your gaps call for.
The five pieces of the platform
Vendors love diagrams; buyers need to know what they’re actually operating. Here’s the whole platform, demystified.
Plan
Every retainer starts with the IR Planner, response runbooks and a Cyber Resilience Assessment, so roles, contacts and first steps exist in writing before an incident is ever declared.
Clock
The retainer tier sets the clock: 4 hours on JumpStart, 3 hours on Incident360, and 1 hour once the Rapid Response add-on is bought, which also lowers the hourly rate to $295.
Investigate
On Incident360 the team runs the forensic investigation, contains the intruder, handles communication with the threat actor where that arises, and drives remediation of the root cause.
Restore
Incident360 funds as many as 30 restoration hours for its one covered incident; the Plus tier adds a tabletop exercise, an IR plan review and a security assessment review.
Plan first, then a contracted clock — forensics, containment, remediation and a 30-hour restoration allowance for one incident.
Nine capabilities. Prepare, respond, restore.
Arctic Wolf Incident Response settles who answers, how fast and at what rate, before the incident rather than during it.
A written plan, not a memory
The IR Planner walks your team through building an incident response plan, so contacts, roles and escalation are set in advance.
Cyber Resilience Assessment
Every JumpStart Retainer includes a Cyber Resilience Assessment that measures where your defences and recovery stand today.
Three readiness sessions
Incident360 Retainer Plus adds a tabletop exercise, a review of your IR plan and a review of your security assessment results.
Four, three or one hour
JumpStart commits to a 4-hour response, Incident360 to 3 hours, and the Rapid Response add-on to 1 hour on either retainer.
Find how they got in
Incident360 responders run the forensic investigation and containment, tracing the entry point before anything is rebuilt.
Someone else takes the call
Where attackers make contact, Incident360 includes communication with the threat actor, run by the responders, not your staff.
Close the hole for good
Remediation work removes persistence and fixes the weakness the forensics found, so the same intruder cannot simply return.
Restoration in the retainer
Incident360 budgets as many as 30 restoration hours for the covered incident, the stage emergency engagements often bill separately.
The hourly rate is settled
Under JumpStart an hour of IR work costs $325, or $295 once Rapid Response is added, agreed long before any crisis.
Watch Arctic Wolf Incident Response in action
Building a plan in the IR Planner (2026), the investigators behind the practice (2025), and the 2023 introduction to Arctic Wolf Incident Response.
How to Build an Incident Response Plan with Arctic Wolf's IR Planner
A walk through the IR Planner that comes with every retainer, from roles and contacts to a finished plan.
Arctic Wolf Incident Response: Expert Technical Investigators for Cyber Incident Recovery
Who the investigators are and how they take an organisation from first call to recovery.
Arctic Wolf Incident Response
The 2023 introduction to the IR practice; retainer names and SLAs have changed since, so use this page for terms.
Want a live, India-context walkthrough for your environment?
Book a guided demo →Every breach starts a clock. Arctic Wolf’s retainers set it in the contract first.
Here’s what genuinely sets it apart — and exactly where it stops.
The SLA and the rate are on paper first
Without a retainer, both get settled mid-incident, when you have no leverage. Arctic Wolf prints them: a 4-hour SLA on JumpStart, 3 hours on Incident360, 1 hour with Rapid Response, and IR work at $325 an hour, cut to $295 by Rapid Response. You can budget an incident before it happens.
One incident, end to end, inside the fee
Incident360 is not a phone number with hourly billing behind it. It covers one incident from forensics and containment through threat-actor communication and remediation to restoration, and up to 30 restoration hours are part of the fee. Arctic Wolf says this costs up to 70% less than an emergency IR engagement.
It finishes what Aurora MDR starts
Aurora MDR’s own response stops at containment and guidance. When an intrusion needs forensics, eradication and a rebuild, Incident360 is the contract that pays for it. Buying both from one vendor means the responders inherit the SOC’s timeline rather than starting cold.
Where it stops
The retainer fees are not published, only the hourly rates. Incident360 covers one incident, so a second one in the term is billed work. No India SOC or India data region is documented, and the retainer page does not say whether unused restoration hours convert into other services. No analyst ranking for the IR practice itself is cited.
The numbers behind the platform
What your Arctic Wolf Incident Response onboarding looks like
Pick the retainer tier
Decide whether a fixed rate (JumpStart) is enough or one fully covered incident (Incident360) is worth the higher fee.
Decide on Rapid Response
Weigh the 1-hour SLA and $295 rate against the 3- or 4-hour default for the systems you cannot run without.
Build the plan in IR Planner
Name decision-makers, counsel, insurer contacts and the restore order, then turn them into runbooks your team can follow.
Run the resilience assessment
Complete the Cyber Resilience Assessment and close the gaps it finds before an attacker finds them for you.
Rehearse with a tabletop
On the Plus tier, run the tabletop and the IR plan review; otherwise rehearse the runbooks with your own team.
The review scoreboard
Modelled on Gartner Peer Insights structure. *Counts and breakdowns are illustrative pending verified review collection.
Quick poll — what’s driving your evaluation?
Talk to an advisor“Ransomware hit a file server on a Saturday. The retainer meant the call was one phone number and a ticket, not a week of procurement.”
“Knowing the $325 rate in advance let finance sign off the retainer in one meeting; the IR budget line finally had a basis.”
“The IR Planner forced us to name decision-makers and outside counsel. That list was the first thing the responders asked for.”
“Their responders handled the attacker’s messages, which kept our directors out of a negotiation they had no training for.”
“The tabletop in the Plus tier exposed that our backups admin was the only person who knew the restore order. We fixed that.”
“Good team, but no India SOC means overnight calls run on US hours, and we wanted the retainer fee printed like the rates.”
Where everyone sits — the grids
Analyst firms bury this view behind paywalls, and G2 retired its Grid. So here’s TechBag’s synthesis of the incident response retainer market — tap any vendor to see why it sits where it does.
TechBag Incident Response Retainer Grid
Execution strength vs product vision — the classic market map, minus the paywall.
Printed SLAs and hourly rates; retainer fees quoted.
Price Transparency × Response Scope
The grid nobody publishes — how much of the SLA and rate card is printed before you sign vs how much of an incident the retainer actually covers.
SLAs and $325/$295 rates printed; forensics through restoration.
Positions are TechBag’s illustrative synthesis of public review-platform data and vendor documentation — not a reproduction of any analyst graphic. Verify before relying on it.
Arctic Wolf Incident Response vs the IR retainer field
Against Palo Alto Unit 42, Mandiant, CrowdStrike Services, Coveware by Veeam and Mitigata — on scope, SLA, price, readiness work, unused value and India.
| Dimension | Arctic Wolf Incident Response | Palo Alto Unit 42 Retainer | Mandiant Incident Response Retainer | CrowdStrike Services Retainer | Coveware by Veeam | Mitigata Managed SOC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Three IR retainers | Prepaid IR credits | Pre-agreed IR terms | Services retainer | Ransomware specialist | MDR with DFIR inside |
| Engagement model | Standalone or bundled | Global 24/7 team | Hotline, live response | Remote, onsite optional | Activated on demand | Ongoing subscription |
| Incident scope | One covered incident | Any incident type | Any suspected incident | IR plus advisory | Extortion cases only | What its SOC sees |
| Pricing model | Retainer + hourly rate | Prepaid credits | Prepaid hours block | Retainer or Flex fund | Prepaid incidents | Scoped subscription |
| Published entry price | $325/hour IR rate | Not published | Not published | $0 to start (Flex) | Not published | Not published |
| Included vs add-on | Planner, runbooks in | Credits flex both ways | Preparedness included | 160 + 40 hours split | Success Manager in | DFIR is a tier |
| Scale limits | One incident, 30 hours | Sized by credits | Sized by hours | 200 hours in Flex | Limited client roster | 1M+ incidents a year |
| Investigation depth | Forensics to restore | Contain, investigate | IR, forensics, malware | Contain to recovery | Triage and decryption | DFIR, not itemised |
| Works with your tools | Pairs with Aurora MDR | Palo Alto visibility | Reviews your stack | Falcon-centred | Recon, Unidecrypt | Unified telemetry |
| Readiness work | Tabletop and reviews | Planning, tabletops | Red team, pen tests | Learns you in advance | Workshops, threat data | Compliance-linked |
| India presence | No India SOC | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated | Bengaluru, since 2023 |
| Response SLA | 4h, 3h or 1h | 24 hours to 2 hours | Two-hour contact | Within hours | SLA-backed, 24/7/365 | 4.2-min MTTD (claim) |
| Unused value and exit | Not stated | Credits re-purposed | Hours re-purposed | Value re-applied | Not described | No prepaid hours |
| Best fit | Mid-market, MDR buyers | Palo Alto estates | Large, regulated firms | Falcon estates | Ransomware exposure | Indian mid-market |
Which approach fits you?
Honest fit signals — because the fastest way to lose your trust is to pretend one product wins every scenario.
Choose Arctic Wolf Incident Response if…
- ✓You want the response SLA and the hourly rate fixed in a contract before anything goes wrong
- ✓You run Aurora MDR and need forensics and restoration beyond the containment it already includes
- ✓You would rather pay for one fully covered incident, restoration hours included, than open-ended emergency billing
Compare alternatives if…
- ✓You want unused retainer value to turn into pen tests or red-team work — Mandiant, Unit 42 and CrowdStrike say it does
- ✓Ransomware negotiation and settlement are the main worry — Coveware specialises in extortion cases
- ✓You need responders and a SOC based in India — Mitigata runs its SOC from Bengaluru
Do not expect…
- ✓A printed retainer fee; only the $325 and $295 hourly rates are public
- ✓Cover for a second incident inside Incident360’s single-incident fee
- ✓An Indian response team or an India data region for case evidence
TechBag has no incident response guide yet, so Arctic Wolf Incident Response sits outside the category guides. Browse all products to compare it with the rest of the catalogue. →
What does an unplanned incident cost you?
Drag the sliders (endpoints in scope; IT-hour cost). Estimates model in-house staff time spent on incident triage, evidence gathering, containment and recovery without a retained responder at an assumed 1.5 hours per endpoint a year, with 70% of it removed by a pre-agreed plan and retained team. Both figures are assumptions. Illustrative.
Loaded cost = salary + overheads per productive hour. Illustrative only — your TechBag quote models your actual environment and modules.
Three ways to consume it
Partly published: Arctic Wolf prints the IR rates — $325 an hour under the JumpStart Retainer, $295 an hour with the Rapid Response add-on and its 1-hour SLA — but not the retainer fees. Incident360 and Incident360 Plus are quoted, and the free Cyber JumpStart toolset is a separate thing. TechBag gets each tier quoted in INR with GST.
JumpStart Retainer
Best for a fixed rate and a plan
- 4-hour response SLA
- IR work at $325 an hour
- IR Planner, runbooks, resilience assessment
+ Platform add-ons
Best for a broader rollout
- Scoped to your estate
- Add-on modules as needed
- Phased, right-sized deployment
Incident360 Retainer
Best for one incident fully covered
- 3-hour response SLA
- Forensics through remediation
- Up to 30 hours of restoration
Buy it for less — TechBag pricing beats list
Whatever the list prices above, TechBag negotiates a significantly better deal — with GST-compliant INR invoicing and local support. Ask us for your discounted quote.
Get an India-ready quote
Tell us your requirements and current tools — we’ll model it against what you spend today.
The 8 questions to ask every vendor
Take this into your next vendor call — including ours.
Is a fixed $325 hourly rate enough, or do you want one incident fully covered under Incident360?
Which systems justify the 1-hour Rapid Response SLA rather than the 3- or 4-hour default?
If you run Aurora MDR, where exactly does its containment stop and the paid retainer begin?
What happens, and at what rate, if a second incident lands during the Incident360 term?
Do unused restoration hours roll over or convert to readiness work? Get the answer in the contract.
Is Arctic Wolf on your cyber insurer’s approved panel, or must the insurer’s own firm lead?
How will responders cover Indian business hours and onsite needs, given no India SOC is documented?
Does the quote show the retainer fee, term, SLA and hourly rate separately, in INR with GST?
Questions buyers ask
Ready to evaluate Arctic Wolf Incident Response?
Model what an unplanned incident costs your team now, or let a TechBag advisor compare JumpStart with Incident360 against your MDR scope and insurance policy.
Stats, ratings, review counts and pricing are illustrative and sourced from public materials; verify before purchase.