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Integrating Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercises into Security Plan

 
Sanjiv Cherian

Sanjiv Cherian, Cyber Security Director
Oct 04, 2024

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Tabletop exercises in cybersecurity are activities that you can conduct in your organisation to evaluate your current security strategies and improve your incident response against cyber attacks.

Individuals and organisations globally are concerned with increasing cyberattacks, new threats, and attack methods. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, worldwide cybercrime costs will grow by 15% per year for the next two years and will reach US$10.5 trillion by 2025.

So, whether you are a business or an enterprise, you must employ advanced technologies and processes to stay safe from attacks. Conducting a cybersecurity tabletop exercise prepares you to face attacks head-on.

Let’s find out what these tabletop exercises are and why you should conduct them.


What Are Tabletop Exercises in Cybersecurity?



Tabletop exercises (TTX) in cybersecurity is a discussion based session where simulated scenarios or events mimicking real-world cyberattacks, such as phishing, ransomware, DDoS attacks, etc are presented to key personnel. These exercises can be informal discussions on a security topic. Or, they can be time-bound, structured simulations, focusing on incident response operations and strategies which evaluate the ability to tackle a real world cyber attack by the employees.

They’re unlike formal security tests like penetration testing, vulnerability detection, etc. that focus on technical aspects only. Cybersecurity tabletop exercises aim to assess:

  • Incident response planning
  • Gaps in security capabilities
  • Communication channels
  • Your cyberattack readiness
  • Effectiveness of your overall current security plans
  • Compliance with applicable laws and regulations


By evaluating these aspects, TTXs help an organisation find its strengths and weaknesses in cybersecurity efforts and adjust strategies to enhance its preparedness to face a real-life cyberattack.

TTX happens in an informal, controlled setting to create a safe learning environment and promote team collaboration and coordination. The exercises include facilitators, participants, and observers (optional).

Facilitators: These are people who administer/control the exercises and draw conclusions, solutions, and answers from the exercise. They also initiate productive discussions on a topic to foster coordination between members and make strategies.

Participants: Participants in a TTX gather virtually or in a room, facilitators who control the exercises present a realistic but hypothetical security incident to them, and are asked to work together to respond to the security incident.

Observers: They observe the exercises and participate in a discussion if required.

Also, TTX participants, observers, and facilitators can come from different departments and have different roles like executives, IT staff, support agents, etc. They analyze and understand the scenario, devise remediation strategies, and resolve the incident. They also create a security incident response plan, improve an existing one, and make critical decisions.


Types of Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercises



Different types of cybersecurity tabletop exercises:

Technical-Only

In these tabletop exercises, participants assess a security incident’s technical aspects like finding the root cause, assets affected, how to restore operations, etc. It involves deeper technical discussions on a security scenario, starting with a “seed” incident/event. Gradually, this event unwinds itself and the organisation will provide additional details about the event.

Thus, participants will get more time to understand and respond to a security incident, which can range from simpler security flaws to complex attacks. Technical-only exercises usually are 1-2 hours long and need you to perform extensive planning for cybersecurity risk assessment and mitigation.

Full-Stakeholder

These scenarios are an extension of technical-only tabletop exercises. Full-stakeholder scenarios look after both technical and non-technical issues (like logistics, reputation management, etc.) related to a security event.

This type of tabletop exercise includes participants from various departments, like technical (incident response team, security analysts, etc.) and non-tech (HR, marketing, legal, etc.). By including different departments, you foster collaboration and coordination between your employees so they can work together in issue remediation.

Typically, full-stakeholder scenarios are 2-4 hours long and are best for companies that want to improve their security, communications, and collaboration organisation-wide.

Rapid-Fire

This is a high-level scenario where participants must understand a given situation quickly. This exercise is about 10-30 minutes long and needs little or no preparation. Participants in this exercise can be senior-, mid-, or junior-level employees from different departments. They’re presented with a security incident and are assessed based on how they respond to the incident.


Role of Tabletop Exercises in Security Planning



According to statistics, security breaches have increased by 72% from 2021 to 2023. Attackers and their methods have become more sophisticated, thus, it’s necessary to have multi-layered security mechanisms and processes to stay safe.

Tabletop exercises simulate real-world attacks to test your organisation's preparedness to face them. These scenarios reveal flaws in your security strategies and how well your team addresses security incidents in real time. It helps you train your employees from different departments on how to identify incidents and keep themselves and the organisation protected by maintaining safety rules.

These scenarios make them battle-ready to combat even complex security incidents. Let’s learn the benefits of conducting tabletop exercises in your organisation:

Evaluates Risks

Tabletop exercises help you assess security risks and vulnerabilities in your network and systems. You can role-play different scenarios to find flaws in your security processes, tools, and methodologies and correct them before any harm comes to your organisation through these loopholes.

For example, you may learn that your security incident response planning is not effective. Your incident responders are not equipped with the latest tools and training to detect and eliminate threats like malware. Thus, your systems and network are vulnerable to attacks.

Improves Preparedness

Your entire workforce must be ready to face cyberattacks, not just your cybersecurity team. With fictional scenarios resembling real-world incidents, tabletop exercises train employees on what to do based on their roles and responsibilities when a security attack happens. It also helps them understand their role in keeping the organisation and themselves secure by following safety best practices, keeping them prepared for any security incident.

For example, you can conduct a tabletop exercise involving your marketing team. They will be presented with a hypothetical scenario where a phishing attack has compromised a system. Evaluate how your marketing team responds to this attack.

Were they able to identify the phishing email?
What did they do first?
Who did they report the incident to?

These questions will help you understand how prepared the team is for a cyberattack. This way, you can eliminate or reduce the impact of a real-world cyberattack and ensure safety.

Fosters Communication and Collaboration

Communication and collaboration are crucial when responding to a cyberattack. Communication gaps can lead to misunderstandings and delay the incident response process, which will increase the risk vector.

For example, an attack happens and your security team detects it. They must know who to contact first and through which channel. Not realising the urgency of the situation or reporting the incident to the concerned person on time through proper channels can lead to the attack becoming even wider and causing more damage.

Thus, set proper communication channels in advance and guide each member of your team on the hierarchy that they should follow when reporting an incident. Promote collaboration and coordination across departments and teams so that the tabletop exercise incident response process flows smoothly during a real cyberattack.

Enhances Compliance

Increasing data security concerns have led regulatory bodies to form stringent laws and regulations for organisations to follow. Non-compliance with these regulations can lead to hefty penalties and reputation loss. In 2023, TikTok was fined $379 million because of violating GDPR norms related to safeguarding children’s data.

By conducting tabletop exercises on compliance-related topics, you can find gaps in your compliance processes and if you adhere to applicable laws and regulations. Tabletop exercise incident response will prepare you to meet compliance requirements during real-time incident response. This ensures you’re handling organisational and customer data properly to avoid compliance issues.

Trains Employees

Whether your employees belong to your security team or non-technical team like HR and marketing, they must be well-trained to face security incidents.

According to a Verizon report, 68% of security breaches happen due to a human element like errors or falling victim to an attack.
This is why it’s important to train your employees on cybersecurity to help reduce the chances of attacks. Tabletop exercises will help you train them to handle incidents with the help of different scenarios and events. It also helps them acquire useful skills and insights to proactively respond to attacks in real-world scenarios.


How to Plan Tabletop Exercises



Let’s now learn how to plan a tabletop exercise.

Set Objectives
Setting the objectives clearly for your tabletop exercise is important to promote a highly engaging learning environment for participants. Otherwise, the activity can seem tedious for them and they might lose focus.

So, when you prepare a scenario, understand the goals behind it. Answer these questions:

What area of your incident response strategy do you wish to improve?
What lessons would someone learn from this exercise?
Who will find it useful?

Evaluate your organisation’s risk vectors to define the goals and align your efforts to achieve those goals. It should address:

  • Your incident response processes
  • Security tools and technologies in place
  • Communication channels
  • Decision-making in short windows of time
  • Attacks that your organisation is most vulnerable to Latest cybersecurity trends
  • Recently discovered vulnerabilities or threats


Ensure these goals align with your business goals and are measurable so that you can evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts.

Form Your Team
Build your team consisting of people from different departments like executives, IT, cybersecurity, communications, legal, marketing, HR, finance, etc. They will provide you with unique perspectives on the exercises that you can utilise.

Executives: They help in decision-making, ensuring the goals of tabletop exercises align with your organisation’s business goals.

IT and cybersecurity: These professionals can be network admins, incident response managers, etc. They are key participants with skills in detecting and eliminating threats.

Communications: External and internal communication specialists interact effectively with the media, customers, stakeholders, etc. during a scenario.

HR: They manage employee-related issues and contribute to the cause through training and skill development.

Compliance and legal: They guide on maintaining legal obligations, detect liabilities, and notify regulatory bodies.

Choose your team based on your organisation’s size and the scope of your tabletop exercises.

Build Scenarios
Next, you’ll need to build the scenarios for your tabletop exercises. These must be realistic and based on the current cybersecurity concerns. For this, you must keep a tab on recent events, vulnerabilities, attack methods, technologies and tools, threat reports, etc.

In addition, your exercises must be aligned with your business operations, procedures, and systems along with the industry norms you operate under. You can also consider the past risks and threats that your organisation has faced or eliminated. Some examples of tabletop exercises you can build:

Phishing attack: A tabletop exercise simulating a phishing attack will help you test how your employee recognises and responds to the attack and improve response accordingly.

Ransomware attack: Conducting a ransomware tabletop exercise will help you understand how your team collaborates in finding and containing the attack, reducing its impacts, taking data recovery actions, and deciding whether or not to pay the ransom.

DDoS attack: Simulating a DDoS attack will help you prepare for a sudden, unexpected attack, improve your response mechanisms, and restore operations.

Privacy violation: A data breach simulation exercise will help you understand the legal implications of a data breach, how to contain it, and address the attack. It also allows you to polish your current processes to remain compliant.

Insider threat: An insider threat simulation involves a situation when someone within the organisation intentionally compromises sensitive data and gains unauthorised access to systems. It lets you test how your team detects the compromise, reduces its impacts, and restores operations.

Other examples can be stimulating supply chain attacks, social engineering attacks, cloud security attacks, etc.

Conduct Exercises
After building your tabletop exercises, prioritise them based on your current security requirements. For example, you can start with phishing simulation exercises as these are rampant these days.

Assign roles and responsibilities to all the participants of that exercise. They could be technical responders, communication specialists, legal advisors, etc. Invite them in a controlled environment (virtual/physical room) and conduct the exercise.

You can also create “injects” or certain events that happen during an exercise like attack progress updates, fresh relevant information, etc. In addition, keep everyone informed of your rules for the exercise like time, communication rules, limitations, etc.

Document, Seek Feedback, and Improve
Once the exercise is complete successfully, document it. Outline the attack, its impacts, and how the participants responded to it. This document will help in training and skill development.

In addition, seek feedback from participants, observers, and other decision-makers and improve your processes. This will also help you improve your incident planning, policies, and response processes. Also, train your employees to maintain internet safety best practices, identify attacks, and report them immediately.

Talk to our experts today


Strengthen Your Cyber Defence with Tabletop Exercises by Microminder CS

Tabletop exercises are an excellent way to prepare your organisation for cyberattacks. If you’re looking to improve your organisation’s defence, Microminder’s cybersecurity tabletop exercise services will help you achieve that.

Leverage our expertise to conduct business continuity tabletop services that align well with your organisation’s security goals and are based on the latest security threats and risks. Our experienced facilitators will guide your participants through real-world scenarios and inject that test their preparedness against attacks. We ensure the process runs smoothly and promote a holistic learning environment.

Schedule your first cybersecurity tabletop exercise today and prepare your organisation for complex attacks. Contact Microminder CS to get started. 

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FAQs

What are tabletop exercises in security?

In security, tabletop exercises are activities where participants gather in a physical or virtual space and are given a fictional security incident to deal with.

What are the objectives of tabletop exercises?

Some objectives of tabletop exercises include: To improve an organisation’s readiness for a cyberattack Strength their incident response strategies Enhance communication and coordination between employees across departments Boost decision-making skills

What are the lessons learnt from tabletop exercises?

The main lessons that you can learn from a cybersecurity tabletop exercise are: Detect gaps in your incident response plans Find strengths and weaknesses in your overall security strategies How to improve your communications and collaboration during an attack Increase threat understanding and awareness

In security, tabletop exercises are activities where participants gather in a physical or virtual space and are given a fictional security incident to deal with.

Some objectives of tabletop exercises include: To improve an organisation’s readiness for a cyberattack Strength their incident response strategies Enhance communication and coordination between employees across departments Boost decision-making skills

The main lessons that you can learn from a cybersecurity tabletop exercise are: Detect gaps in your incident response plans Find strengths and weaknesses in your overall security strategies How to improve your communications and collaboration during an attack Increase threat understanding and awareness

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