Stopping a cyber incident and restoring operations requires more than technology — it depends on having the right plans, people, and processes working together under pressure. Effective incident response (IR) readiness helps position your organization to act with precision to contain threats, prevent escalation, and return to normal operations quickly.
A cornerstone of a mature IR strategy is the tabletop exercise. Often overlooked, tabletop exercises transform an IR plan from theory into practice, helping organizations strengthen resilience, validate decision-making, and advance overall security maturity.
What is a Tabletop Exercise?
A tabletop exercise is a simulated, discussion-based activity where stakeholders within an organization walk through a hypothetical cyber incident to test how the organization would respond.
Unlike more technical drills such as penetration tests, tabletop exercises focus on decision-making, communication, and coordination across departments (e.g. leadership, security, legal, compliance) and key decision points. The end goal of a tabletop exercise is to validate an existing IR plan, identify gaps within that plan, and strengthen collaboration and IR readiness before an incident may occur.
Tabletop exercises often cover common attack scenarios, including:
- Ransomware attacks
- Business email compromise (BEC) attacks
- Insider threat attacks
- DDoS attacks
- Supply chain and third-party breaches
- Data breach
- Operational technology (OT) attack
It’s vital that a given tabletop exercise is tailored to your organization’s risk points, business goals, and industry. Running a tabletop exercise which includes scenario specifics that are unlikely to occur at your organization won’t provide valuable information and can inadvertently hinder IR planning. In the same way that all security measures are highly tailored, IR planning strategies, such as running a tabletop exercise, should be as well.
An organization should make sure to consider their industry, their size, their risk profile, their compliance requirements, and the maturity of their security program when creating (or choosing) and running a tabletop exercise to achieve maximum impact.
Tabletop Exercises vs. Penetration Tests vs. Live Scenarios
Tabletop exercises are just one of a few hypothetical cyber attack exercises an organization can run to test their security systems and response. While tabletop exercises, penetration tests, and live scenarios are all important for testing and improving an organization’s security posture, each serves a different purpose and contains different parameters.
Tabletop exercises vs penetration (pen) tests
Pen tests are more technical than tabletop exercises and are utilized primarily to identify technical vulnerabilities within an organization’s security architecture, solutions, and tech stack. Participants are usually limited to IT and security staff, and the end goal of exposing and remediating technical weaknesses is much narrower compared to a tabletop exercise.
Tabletop exercises vs. Live scenarios
Live scenarios test real-word responses to attacks by a given organization and are often conducted in a “red team vs. blue team” format. The goal of these scenarios is to test security response readiness, timing, and operations under a high-stress scenario, and they are typically carried out by security personnel or an organization’s SOC. These in-real-life (IRL) scenarios are often much more involved than tabletop exercises, may interrupt systems and operations, and are rarely conducted due to their complexity and resource intensity.
While penetration tests and live simulations typically focus on specific technologies, personnel actions, and measurable outcomes, tabletop exercises take a broader approach. Their purpose is to validate and strengthen the overall IR plan, ensuring effective communication, stakeholder alignment, and organizational resilience.
Tabletop Exercise Best Practices
While every tabletop exercise will be different and offer exercise-specific insights, there are a few ways organizations can set themselves up for success.
Tabletop exercise best practices include:
1. Setting clear objectives of what will be tested (e.g. escalation paths, decision making, communication flows) to keep the exercise and results focused
2. Tailoring scenarios to organization-specific risks to ensure the exercise aligns with real-world possibilities
3. Engaging cross-functional stakeholders as cyber incidents often affect multiple departments within an organization
4. Assigning and clarifying roles during the exercise to best evaluate if those roles are understood and effective
5. Focusing on people and processes, not the technology utilized, as tabletop exercises are intended to test IR plans, not detection and response solutions
6. Utilizing a skilled facilitator to maximize the exercise and its impact
7. Turning insights into action to enhance cyber resilience and improve IR plans
8. Integrating the exercise with an IR retainer for alignment to the broader security strategy and IR readiness
Why Tabletop Exercises Are Beneficial
Despite their value, an organization may not run tabletop exercises regularly. Common barriers for organizations include lack of time, uncertainty about how to conduct them, or the assumption that having a written IR plan is enough. Organizations may also find competing priorities, time and resource constraints, perception of limited value, or even in-organization lack of ownership as challenges to completing a tabletop exercise.
However, the reality is that tabletop exercises reveal potential IR issues no document can.
Tabletop exercises highlight whether an organization’s people know how to interpret the plan, collaborate under stress, and make critical decisions in real time. For more regulated industries, they also demonstrate due diligence in preparedness — a factor that can mitigate fines and reputational damage after a breach.
Tabletop exercises contain many benefits. These exercises can:
- Validate and enhance existing IR plan
- Improve stakeholder and cross-departmental coordination
- Enhance compliance readiness and help meet specific compliance requirements
- Boost IR confidence among departments, from IT personnel to organization leadership
- Strengthen cyber resilience across the organization
Additionally, organizations learn a great deal from tabletop exercises about the state of their IR readiness, including:
- What roles and responsibilities exist, and how clearly they are communicated
- How effective the current IR plan is and what improvements needs to be made
- What risks exist and how well do those risks align to their IR plan and larger business goals
- What is the state of their IR readiness
- What cultural and behavioral tendencies may affect IR if an incident occurs
Take a deep dive into IR planning and IR readiness.
Tabletop Exercises as Part of an IR Planning and Readiness Strategy
Tabletop exercises can be run in isolation, but more commonly occur and are scrutinized as part of an organization’s IR planning and readiness activities. They are vital for ensuring an organization’s IR strategy is more than a document by testing how well people, processes, and communication hold up under simulated stress.
While organizations can and do conduct these tabletop exercises in-house, working with a third-party, such as an IR retainer provider, carries with it key benefits and security expertise. In addition to relieving certain practical barriers to completing a tabletop exercise (e.g. resource constraints, lack of ownership, inability to perceive value, scenario design challenges) IR retainer providers can create custom, tailored exercises as well as help guide the organization through the exercise and offer key takeaways and action items afterward.
Often, the third party will help the organization make adjustments and enhancements to their IR plan after the tabletop exercise as well. By connecting findings back to an IR strategy, tabletop exercises can accelerate maturity, improve readiness, and ensure that when an incident does occur, the organization is prepared to act.
Tabletop exercises transform incident response from theory into action, giving organizations the confidence and clarity needed to handle real-world threats. By investing the time to run them — especially with expert guidance — businesses strengthen resilience, refine decision-making, and ensure their IR strategy is battle-ready.
See how the Arctic Wolf® Incident360 Retainer offers advance readiness tools, including guided tabletop exercises, to better prepare organizations for cyber incidents and minimize their impact.
Enhance your existing IR plan, or create a new one, with our actionable, insight-packed webinar, “Tales from the Trenches: Leverage Real-Life Learnings to Craft a Robust Incident Response Plan.”
