The Importance of Tabletop Cybersecurity Exercises

The Importance of Tabletop Cybersecurity Exercises

 The military is always on the cutting edge of technological and strategic innovations. While they usually use war games to train personnel, these exercises can be difficult to schedule and expensive to execute. However, tabletop exercises, where key personnel deliberate on various simulated emergencies or rapid response situations, are cheaper, much easier to set up and can be just as productive as war games. Tabletop exercises improve a teams’ disaster preparedness, coordination skills and role/responsibility disruption under duress. And these exercises also help program managers identify deficiencies in cybersecurity process/procedures, personnel shortcomings and additional training requirements.


From GPS and radar to duct tape and computers, military inventions are often later adopted by the public—tactical simulations are no exception. Many organizations only use a cybersecurity incident response (IR) plan; however, this is not enough as it is purely theoretical and not wholly representative of an actual cyberattack. And despite the rapid growth of the cybersecurity industry, cybercrime is still on the rise. Hackers regularly compromise corporate systems because businesses continue to leverage outdated security postures and maintain poor practices resulting in unprotected and vulnerable data. Alternatively, companies should adopt tabletop cybersecurity exercises – which, much like the military’s equivalent, simulate actual attacks to better prepare individuals for real-world scenarios.    


What Exactly is a Tabletop Cybersecurity Exercise?


A tabletop exercise is a verbal preparedness activity where participants are taken through a simulated security incident and given hands-on training to highlight flaws and areas of improvement in their response planning. The primary goal is to evaluate a business’ IR plan and IR team’s reaction to a cyberattack, reveal gaps in the ..

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