05 / Respond / Tabletop exercises
CybersecurityTabletop Exercises
Practice before it counts.
Exercises that show whether your plan works with real people in the room.
What you get
- Tabletop exercises for executives and technical teams
- Realistic scenarios drawn from your industry
- A written after-action report with findings
- Plan updates based on what the exercise showed
How it works
We design a scenario with you, run the exercise in a few hours, and deliver the findings afterward.
Formats and process
How we run a tabletop exercise
Choose the format that fits your team, then we design, run and follow up.
Basic orientation
Format
A walk-through of your incident response plan with key stakeholders.
Functional tabletop
Format
A scenario-driven discussion with injects and decision points.
Advanced or multi-party
Format
Adds legal, communications, executives or outside partners to the exercise.
Design
Two to four weeks before
Agree objectives such as testing escalation, ransomware decisions or regulatory notification, choose the scenario and injects, identify participants and roles, and prepare the facilitator guide and evaluation criteria.
Conduct
Half a day to a full day
Participants are briefed on the rules: no-fault, discussion-based and time-boxed. We present the scenario and injects, facilitate decisions, and note strengths, gaps, delays and communication issues.
After-action
Follows the session
An after-action report with observations and prioritized recommendations, a debrief, and improvement actions with owners and due dates that feed your response plan, playbooks and training.
You receive the exercise objectives and scenario package, facilitator and participant materials, the after-action report and an improvement action tracker.
Common questions
How long does a tabletop exercise take?
Most run a few hours. We plan the scenario beforehand with you, run the exercise in one session, and deliver a written after-action report afterward.
Who should attend?
Executives who would make decisions during an incident, your IT and security leads, and the people who handle legal, HR, communications and operations. A mix of decision makers and technical staff produces the most useful findings.
How often should we run one?
At least once a year, and again after major changes such as a new system, a merger or a real incident. Many insurers and compliance frameworks expect incident response plans to be tested regularly.
Bring us the complicated part.
Talk with a credentialed CISO and an accountable team. Email [email protected] or call (877) 77-vCISO.