Incident Response Tenders and Contracts

Incident response procurement covers cyber incident response retainers that put a responder on call before an attack, managed detection and response, round-the-clock security operations centre services and digital forensics. Response playbooks and tabletop exercises are bought too. Rail recovery locomotives and mass fatality support are a different service using the same words.

Stotles brings together incident response tenders and contracts from 100+ portals into one search, so you do not have to check each portal separately, and you can set alerts for new opportunities across the UK and Ireland.

If you want to search the government portals directly, Find a Tender carries higher-value contracts across the UK and Contracts Finder carries lower-value contracts in England. Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Ireland's eTenders covers Irish public bodies, and many councils, NHS bodies and housing associations publish on their own e-tendering portals such as ProContract. Incident response retainers are often called off from G-Cloud and the Cyber Security Services dynamic purchasing system, and direct awards to a single supplier are common.

Incident response tenders are scored on NCSC assurance, response times, team qualifications, forensics capability and retainer price. Many buyers appoint through frameworks, so a framework place comes before individual retainers.

Cyber incident response suppliers are often expected to be NCSC-assured under the Cyber Incident Response scheme, and responders may need security clearance. Tenders usually set minimum insurance cover, check financial standing and ask for evidence of similar engagements at selection stage. Under the Procurement Act 2023, suppliers can be excluded for certain criminal convictions, insolvency or failure to pay tax.

Two recur: the Cyber Security Services 3 DPS, used to appoint NCSC-assured cyber incident response partners, and G-Cloud, used for retainer call-offs. Direct awards to a single supplier are common as well, so a framework place is worth having before an incident forces the buyer's hand.

Many retainers are call-offs or direct awards from G-Cloud and the Cyber Security Services dynamic purchasing system, and detection and response contracts often run for three years. Councils, NHS bodies, housing associations, universities, fire services and government departments buy these services.

Read cyber security strategies, retainer expiry dates, security operations centre contract renewals and early market engagement notices, which show incident response work coming due ahead of a notice. On Stotles you can track those signals and the buyers behind them, then follow a notice from pre-tender through to award.

Incident response has no CPV code of its own. Notices carry 72220000 (Systems and technical consultancy services), 72000000 (IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support) and 48000000 (Software package and information systems).