Cybersecurity Glossary
Tabletop Exercise
A discussion based rehearsal of an incident, without touching any systems.
What Tabletop Exercise means
A tabletop exercise walks a realistic scenario through the room. A facilitator introduces developments and the participants say what they would do. It takes about two hours, needs no technology, and reliably exposes the gaps that a written plan hides.
Why Tabletop Exercise matters for small businesses and nonprofits
Plans read well and fail in practice. The exercise is usually where an organisation discovers that the person who holds the backup credentials is on holiday, or that nobody knows who is authorised to take systems offline.
What to do about Tabletop Exercise
- Include leadership, not only technical staff, since the hard decisions are theirs
- Use a scenario that matches your realistic threats, such as ransomware or a redirected payment
- Write down what did not work and fix those items before the next exercise
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