Cyber Tabletop Exercise Template

Elevate your cybersecurity readiness with our FREE Cyber Tabletop Exercise Template. Created by the world's leading facilitator of Cyber Attack Tabletop Exercises, this template can be customised to your organisational context. You can use this cyber tabletop exercise template as a guide for conducting your own successful cyber security drill!

Cyber-attack tabletop exercises are a true test of your organisation’s cybersecurity readiness and Incident Response (IR) capabilities. Through a verbal simulation of a real-life cyber attack scenario, you can evaluate and enhance your IR team’s preparedness and response to a cybersecurity incident. The cyber security drill will unravel the existing gaps in your Cyber Incident Response Plan and your IR team’s familiarity with it. It also helps your team understand their individual roles and responsibilities better and practice decision-making for an actual cyber crisis.

Here are some immediate benefits of downloading our Cyber Tabletop Exercise Template:

Free access to insights by the world's leading cyber tabletop facilitator. The template is enriched with expert insights, recommendations and nuances that are often overlooked when conducting a cyber drill internally.
Guidance on planning for and structuring a successful cyber attack drill.
Advice on tailoring the template to the organisational context. The document shows you how to build the content for maximum engagement and output.
Expert tips on identifying the right participants, communication channels, code of conduct etc.
Strategies on creating the right, contextual scenario with relevant injects, allowing participants to fathom the full impact of a cyber-attack and the gravity of their roles & contribution in an attack situation.
Invaluable advice on the evaluation process and how to accurately identify where your organisational cyber attack readiness stands.

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Why Should You Download our Cyber Tabletop Exercise Template?

Cyber threats are looming large with increased sophistication and number. There is no escaping them. However, you can prepare for them and ensure that when you’re under attack, you’re ready to respond as effectively as possible and mitigate the damage.

This is exactly what a Cyber Tabletop Exercise helps with. It helps you rehearse your Incident Response Plans, Playbooks and strategies in a real-world attack setting. The exercise will help you assess your team’s decision-making abilities, response capabilities and promote a culture of continuous improvement in cybersecurity readiness.

Why Use a Template for Your Cyber Security Drill?

Using a ready-made template in cybersecurity drills revolutionises the approach to these exercises. Templates provide a consistent, detailed structure. They ensure you pay attention to every aspect of the exercise so it’s truly successful at judging your cyber attack readiness. It ensures complete coverage of potential threats and standardised response protocols.

Why download this template?

Cyber Management Alliance is the world leader in facilitating tabletop exercises. We have helped over 300 clients bolster their preparedness for cyber attacks with our cybersecurity mock drills. Now our experts have put together their key insights from their unparalleled experience into creating this customisable template.

They bring experience from real-life cyber-attack mitigations and IT Security tabletop testing to cover all those points that internal staff may unknowingly overlook. It shows you how to structure your exercise, choose the right participants, brief them on the expectations from the exercise and most importantly, build a compelling cyber security drill scenario.

Scenario Planning: Scenario planning forms the crux of any successful cyber-attack tabletop exercise template. It must be relevant, challenging and thought-provoking. Our tabletop exercise template shows you how to achieve this!

You can also use our exhaustive list of the Top 30 Cyber Security Tabletop Exercise scenarios to complement your use of this template and make your exercise all the more effective.

Communication: Our exercise template emphasises the critical role of clear, structured communication before, during, and after a cybersecurity incident. We even offer recommendations for guides that you can create in the planning stage for better results. It contains protocols for internal communication, coordination with external agencies, and timely updates to stakeholders, ensuring clarity, compliance and authority in crisis communication.

Logistics: The document is enriched with recommendations on exercise hygiene as well, making it the most comprehensive Cyber Tabletop Exercise Template! These tips range from logistical arrangements, like securing an uninterrupted environment, to technical advice on making the simulation more engaging and interactive.

Post-Exercise Evaluation: The lessons learned from a cyber tabletop exercise are critical to your cyber incident readiness. This process is pivotal in our template design. We have included significant recommendations on how to conduct a thorough post-exercise analysis and debrief. This section encourages teams to dissect their performance, understand the decision-making process during the drill, and identify areas requiring improvement. We also include guidance on implementing the lessons learned for continuous improvement.

Customise and Create Your Own Cyber-Attack Simulation Exercise

While our template is exhaustive, we understand the uniqueness of each organisation. The template has been designed for ease of customisation. It even offers you guidance on how to use and contextualise it for your specific business. It allows seamless incorporation of company-specific scenarios, threats, and response protocols.