Developing an Incident Response Tabletop Exercise

Whether you work in government, manufacturing, healthcare, retail, education, or another industry, cybersecurity must be your top priority. 

With the average cost of a data breach in 2020 totalling $3.86 million, effective threat management is crucial for every business and agency trying to avoid financial damage and regulatory fines--not to mention tainted customer relationships, reputational loss, and infrastructure harm caused by cybercrime.

That’s where incident response planning comes into play. A detailed response plan helps ensure you are prepared for the “what if” scenario. By developing this plan, organizations are better positioned to quickly react to an attack and mitigate risks to employees, stakeholders, customers, and profits.

However, an incident response plan is only useful if it is followed by every employee. To help staff, organizations should regularly test their responses through real-life simulations, also known as tabletop exercises. These exercises allow employees to learn about and practice their incident response roles. In addition, the exercises can help you discover gaps in your plan.

Download this step-by-step guide to learn about:

• Employing a 10-step process when using tabletop exercises
• Types of tabletop exercises
• How to conduct a tabletop exercise
• Sample exercises