Organizations don’t want to wait until a cyberattack happens to find out if their incident response plan is effective. To stay ahead of threat actors, tabletop exercises can help determine if your teams are ready to handle incidents with tabletop exercises.
Tabletop Exercise: An Overview
What is tabletop exercise (TTX) in cybersecurity?
A tabletop exercise (TTX) is a role-playing activity where participants respond to simulated cyber incidents. The goal is to ensure teams are prepared to handle a cybersecurity crisis if it happens.
Tabletop exercises are meant to spot issues with the current incident response plan. Organizations may discover problems with communication, coordination, team roles, or even the effectiveness of their current response strategies. The tabletop exercises reveal areas of improvement before bad actors can take advantage of them.
What is TTX used for?
Tabletop exercises provide valuable insights into how prepared a team is for cyberattacks. By mimicking real-world situations, organizations can strengthen their defenses. Tabletop exercises in cybersecurity are used for:
- Evaluating the current incident response plan
- Identifying potential gaps in security measures
- Providing a controlled environment to train employees
Why do a cybersecurity tabletop exercise?
Cyber threats are constantly evolving and unpredictable which means organizations must ensure their systems and teams are prepared to respond. Tabletop exercises are particularly relevant in today’s cybersecurity environment because they:
- Can mimic recent cyberattacks which helps organizations prepare for relevant threats
- Promote vigilance about unexpected threats among teams
- Support strategic decisions about risk management and resource allocation
- Ensure business continuity during a cyber crisis
Cyberattacks can happen at any time. Cybersecurity tabletop exercises provide a proactive approach to testing and strengthening incident response strategies. Some additional benefits of tabletop exercises include:
- Improve communication and collaboration between stakeholders
- Cost-effective way to strengthen cyber resilience
- Insights provide action steps for refining long-term risk management
- Teams build confidence in their ability to handle risky situations
- Helps ensure regulatory compliance
How to Plan a Tabletop Exercise for Cybersecurity
What needs to be in place before a tabletop exercise happens?
Organizations need to prepare an incident response plan before they can conduct a tabletop exercise. You’ll also need to train your team on the incident response plan. Once you have a plan and a trained team, you can start using tabletop exercises to evaluate the effectiveness of the incident response plan.
How to design a tabletop exercise
While each exercise may vary, the organizer of the tabletop exercise will usually follow this timeline:
- Identify objectives
- Select participants
- Set date and time
- Develop cybersecurity scenario
- Create materials such as a presentation and evaluation form
- Conduct exercise
- Host a debriefing session
- Prepare the After Action Report (AAP)
How long is a tabletop exercise?
A tabletop exercise usually takes between 1-4 hours to complete. The time varies depending on the exercise’s complexity and organization size. Be sure to pick a date far enough in advance to ensure the maximum number of attendees.
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Who should be involved in a tabletop exercise?
Participants should include anyone who would be involved in a real cybersecurity event. This can involve decision-makers from IT, management, legal, PR, HR, and finance departments.
Tabletop exercises are led by a facilitator. They guide the scenario, provide situation updates, moderate discussions, and engage all participants.
“The facilitators will present some facts to the players that appear innocuous but may later turn out to have signaled a serious issue,” according to the CISA. “They may provide information that seems contradictory to established facts, or that could cause the team to be distracted from the real problem.”
Ultimately, everyone involved in a tabletop exercise participates in the response to a cyber incident.
How do you evaluate a tabletop exercise?
There are two ways to evaluate a tabletop exercise. One way is to conduct a debriefing session. Immediately after the tabletop exercise, the facilitator will discuss what went well and what didn’t. The facilitator may also ask key players to share any concerns or ideas for improvement. The goal of a debriefing session is to identify the lessons learned and what needs to be improved.
Another way is to create an After Action Report (AAR). The report contains a summary of the key findings from the tabletop exercise. It should also include recommendations and action steps for improvement.
The AAR can be delivered to participants of the tabletop exercise. Participants should have the opportunity to agree on the content, outline the next steps, assign responsibilities, and implement a timeline. Alternatively, you can deliver the AAR via email and ask for feedback.
Best practice for tabletop exercise for cybersecurity
The CISA has tips on how to conduct a cybersecurity tabletop exercise. Some advice includes:
- Think out loud to reduce tension among players
- Foster a supportive and low-stress environment
- There is no room for spectators, so ensure everyone participates in the exercise
- TTX can range from 4-hour-long productions to supplementary 10-minute discussions.
- Create a shared document for everyone to take notes, add comments, or make suggestions in real-time
- Have printed incident response plans available
- Don’t forget to have fun. Teams may learn and retain information more in a friendly environment
Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercise Examples
The CISA has provided several cybersecurity scenarios for tabletop exercises. Since there are a wide variety of scenarios that can impact organizations, tabletop exercises are often tailored to a specific organization’s biggest threats. The exercises can help prepare responses for a multitude of cyberattacks.
Some tabletop exercise scenarios can include the following:
- Ransomware attack
- Data breach
- Insider threat
- Supply chain attack
- Phishing attack
- Zero-day exploit
- Credential compromise
- Malware
- DDoS attack
Flare and Tabletop Exercise for Cybersecurity
How can Flare help with tabletop exercises?
Incident readiness is crucial for an organization to fight threats proactively. Flare can support root cause analysis with identity threat intelligence. The platform automatically scans the dark web and automatically notifies your team of potential threats.
Threat intelligence helps the incident readiness lifecycle by ensuring security teams identify relevant threats and respond to them quickly.
Improve Incident Readiness with Flare and Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercises
The Flare Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution empowers organizations to proactively detect, prioritize, and mitigate the types of exposures commonly exploited by threat actors. Our platform automatically scans the clear & dark web and prominent threat actor communities 24/7 to discover unknown events, prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security. With Flare providing valuable threat intelligence, organizations can improve their incident readiness.
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