Guides·27 August 2026

A Guide to Containing Active Breaches with a Control Blueprint

How Control Blueprint CP-02 uses Control Modules to contain a live breach physically, immediately and provably, what good looks like, and how a deployment is scoped.

Mark Fermor
Mark FermorDirector & Co-Founder, Firevault
3 min read
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A Guide to Containing Active Breaches with a Control Blueprint
Guides

Why it matters

What this means for organisations holding critical data

How Control Blueprint CP-02 uses Control Modules to contain a live breach physically, immediately and provably, what good looks like, and how a deployment is scoped.

About this guide

This guide is written for security, infrastructure and risk leaders who need to contain a live breach physically, immediately and provably. It explains one Control Blueprint, CP-02, in plain terms: the failure it addresses, the Control Modules it uses, how those modules work together, and how a deployment is scoped.

Control by Firevault is a suite of nine purpose-built modules: a set of tools and techniques that give you physical control over the paths into and across your estate. A Control Blueprint is a proven combination of those modules assembled for a specific outcome. This guide covers one blueprint. The Control overview covers the nine modules and the full set of blueprints.

The problem this blueprint addresses

During a live incident the slowest part of the response is usually not detection. It is the authority, coordination and configuration work needed to cut a path. Minutes spent negotiating a firewall change are minutes an attacker spends encrypting or exfiltrating.

CP-02 at a glance

  • Lead layer FIRE
  • Primary modules Firebreak, Isolate, Execute
  • Supporting modules Archive, Lock
  • Typical sectors Financial services, energy, public sector and defence

The primary modules

These modules do the work the blueprint is named for.

  • Firebreak physically breaks the connection path, so a route only exists when it is deliberately opened.
  • Isolate separates an environment at hardware level, so a compromised zone cannot reach a clean one.
  • Execute fires the control action on signal, without waiting for a change window.

The supporting modules

These modules round out the pattern and are usually added as the deployment matures.

  • Archive preserves logs, records and evidence beyond the reach of the live estate.
  • Lock holds access to the systems that matter behind identity and condition controls.

What good looks like

  • Containment can be executed in seconds by the responder on shift.
  • Isolation holds even if management systems are compromised.
  • Evidence and recovery points survive the incident intact.
  • Reconnection is deliberate, staged and recorded.

How the blueprint is deployed

Control Modules are a suite of tools and techniques deployed within your own estate and applied to the paths they govern: at a boundary, inside a zone, or at a third-party edge. Authorisation and evidence remain local, so losing connectivity to Firevault never opens a path.

Most deployments start with a single boundary or zone, prove the control behaviour, then extend the same blueprint across the estate. Modules can be customer-operated or co-managed.

How to scope it

Scoping starts with the paths, not the product. A short discovery exercise identifies the boundaries that matter, who needs to cross them, how often, and what evidence is required. That produces the module count and placement, which in turn produces the price. Blueprints are combined where an estate has more than one problem to solve.

Next steps

About the author

Mark Fermor

Mark Fermor

Director & Co-Founder

Co-founder of Firevault, focused on offline secure storage and protecting individuals and businesses from fraud, fines, loss and damage. Speaker, owner and advisor.

How Firevault would handle this

A recovery copy an attacker cannot reach

Offline Secure Storage® keeps a clean copy of your data on hardware that is physically disconnected, so backup and recovery do not depend on systems an intruder can touch.

HardwareYour copy sits on dedicated encrypted hardware
DisconnectOffline by default, connected only when you say so
RecoveryA known-clean copy to rebuild from, on your timetable
LocationHeld in a secure Firevault Bunker
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