Tabletop Business Continuity Exercise: A Practical Guide

A business continuity tabletop exercise is a structured simulation meant to evaluate your organisation's readiness to tackle disruptions while safeguarding operations and critical functions.

Only around 49% of businesses globally maintain a formal Business Continuity Plan (BCP).

For GCC countries like KSA and the UAE, where Vision 2030 and big infrastructure projects depend on digital continuity, even short periods of downtime can lead to big losses in reputation and money. Tabletop exercises help anticipate and prepare to tackle situations that could cause disruption. 

Why Tabletop Exercises Are Critical for Business Continuity

A business continuity tabletop exercise tests your business continuity plan in a controlled, discussion-based session to identify weak points, improve coordination, and strengthen decision-making under pressure.

These simulations let teams reveal planning gaps, streamline team roles, improve coordination, improve decision-making under stress, and practice crisis leadership without interrupting daily operations.

In sectors like finance, energy, or healthcare, regulatory authorities like SAMA (Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority) in the KSA and the UAE’s National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority emphasise tested BCPs.

SAMA rules say that supplier continuity plans must be tested every year and that BCPs must be checked for effectiveness every year.

Tabletop drills in Saudi Arabia and the UAE also align with Vision 2030 priorities across sectors such as tourism, renewable energy, and logistics, where business continuity is key.

Key Elements of a Successful Tabletop BCP Exercise

A successful business continuity tabletop exercise relies on clear objectives, relevant threat scenarios, inclusive participation, structured facilitation, and actionable follow-up. Each component plays a vital role in determining how effective the exercise will be in improving your continuity strategy.

Defined Objectives

Your tabletop exercise for BCP must begin with clearly defined goals.

In GCC countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, critical national infrastructure sectors such as oil, aviation, and finance depend on real-time decision-making.

Tabletop exercises in the region often include goals like evaluating remote work readiness, vendor engagement continuity, or emergency leadership response.

Without clear and measurable objectives, tabletop exercises can become vague simulations with limited practical impact. 

 Realistic Scenarios

Scenarios should reflect real, high-impact threats that your organisation is likely to face.

For instance, in Saudi Arabia, an appropriate scenario might involve a ransomware attack targeting an oil distribution network.

In the UAE, your BCP tabletop test could simulate telecom disruption during Expo-related peak usage.

Drawing from recent regional events or events reported by regulators like NCA, SAMA, or NESA ensures participants can relate, engage seriously, and respond enthusiastically. 

Cross-Functional Participation

Crisis response doesn’t happen in isolation. Effective tabletop exercises require collaboration across all business functions and departments, not just IT. Your exercise should also involve HR, operations, compliance, legal, facilities, and public relations.

For example, in the GCC, a cyberattack on a smart healthcare system would require input from IT security, clinical operations, legal, public relations, and government affairs.

By including IT, cybersecurity, HR, legal, operations, and communications in the simulation, you ensure realistic engagement and uncover interdepartmental misalignments that could stall your actual recovery.

Including multiple teams helps reveal process gaps and coordination challenges. 

Skilled Facilitator

An experienced facilitator guides the exercise, keeps the session on track, and challenges participants to think critically so as to yield valuable outcomes. Ideally, this person is external or impartial to ensure objective observations.

In regulated fields like finance, energy, or organisations that have to follow NCA ECC v3.0 or SAMA rules, paperwork and audit trails are important. The facilitator is also in charge of keeping track of what was learnt, what decisions were made, and making sure they are in line with how things really work. 

Post-Exercise Review and Improvements

The most valuable outcomes happen after the exercise ends.

The post-exercise review should be just as structured as the exercise itself. It’s where strategic gaps become actionable improvements. Document findings, highlight strengths and failures, and assign follow-up actions. Update your BCP, incident response procedures, and training plans accordingly.

For GCC-based businesses that are overseen by SAMA or NCA, keeping track of these improvements helps with compliance reporting and builds trust during third-party assessments.

KPMG UAE says that companies that always act on post-exercise reviews show stronger business continuity maturity, especially when they have to deal with quickly changing regulatory or geopolitical pressures. 

Common Scenarios for Business Continuity Tabletop Exercises

A well-structured tabletop exercise for business continuity should be based on realistic, high-impact threats that your organisation could face.

For instance, if you are GCC-based, consider those threats that are common across the GCC’s key industries like agriculture, healthcare, aviation, logistics, and energy.

Here are 5 top critical scenarios to simulate.

Natural Disaster

Simulate flooding from seasonal storms impacting Saudi coastal cities like Jeddah or Dammam, or a widespread sandstorm disrupting airport and highway operations across the UAE.

Example: In November 2020, heavy rainstorms in Jeddah submerged major roadways, causing business closures and supply delays. A disaster recovery tabletop exercise could explore office access issues, remote activation, and emergency communication protocols.

Cyberattack

Model a ransomware breach targeting critical digital services, such as a smart city platform in Riyadh or a fintech system in Dubai, crippling customer transactions.

Example: In 2021, ransomware attacks hit UAE’s Al Qassimi Hospital and other GCC healthcare entities, halting patient management systems during COVID-19. A business continuity exercise can test response workflows, data recovery, and communication with regulators.

Utility Failure

Be ready for problems that might happen if the power goes out for a long time or the internet goes down in Abu Dhabi or Riyadh. This can stop work in places that depend on them a lot, like call centres or logistics hubs.

Example: During a 2022 regional telecom outage (Etisalat) in the UAE, businesses lost access to VoIP and cloud services. A tabletop drill could assess backup bandwidth plans and client support contingencies.

Supply Chain Disruption

Simulate port closures or key supplier breakdowns affecting critical imports in Saudi Arabia or the UAE, particularly in food, pharmaceuticals, or electronics.

Example: The 2021 global container backlog impacted Jebel Ali Port, delaying inventory for several GCC retailers. Exercises can test alternate sourcing, warehouse reallocation, and customer communication strategies. 

Pandemic Resurgence

Revisit the possibility of a new pandemic wave or health emergency requiring swift shifts to remote work, workforce rebalancing, and supply continuity.

Example: In early 2022, Omicron-related restrictions affected staffing in Dubai airports. A scenario could test employee availability models, medical response coordination, and HR escalation paths. 

Step‑by‑Step Guide to Running a Tabletop BCP Exercise

To run a successful tabletop business continuity exercise, you need a structured approach that includes setting clear objectives, choosing a realistic scenario, involving the right participants, building a time-based narrative, facilitating open discussion, capturing feedback, and applying the learning to your continuity plan.

Step 1: Define Objectives

Start by clearly stating what you want to achieve. Objectives could include testing your team’s response time, evaluating escalation chains, validating remote work activation, or ensuring vendor coordination. Make sure goals are specific, measurable, and linked to key business functions. 

Pro Tip: Without defined objectives, it becomes difficult to measure success or extract value from the exercise. 

Step 2: Select the Scenario

Choose a scenario that reflects realistic, high-impact threats based on your location, sector, and regulatory landscape. In the GCC, options may include a targeted cyberattack on oil infrastructure, telecom failure during Hajj, or a supply chain shutdown at Jebel Ali Port.

Pro Tip: Align scenarios with recent threats or incidents to ensure buy-in and relevance.

Step 3: Identify Participants

Include all stakeholders who would be involved in a real disruption: senior leadership, IT, security, HR, operations, legal, compliance, facilities, and third-party vendors. Refer to the SAMA BCP expectations for regulated entities.

Pro Tip: Ensure participants know their roles in advance and receive briefing materials prior to the exercise. 

Step 4: Prepare the Narrative and Timeline

Build a clear scenario timeline that unfolds over 30 to 90 minutes. Include key “injects” (events like system failure or breaking news) to prompt decision-making. These should prompt realistic stress points, such as system outages, public backlash, or regulator involvement.

Example:

• Minute 10: IT systems go offline
• Minute 20: Media reports a suspected breach
• Minute 30: Regulator requests an impact update 

Pro Tip: Define who will deliver the injects and what information is available at each step. Keep your injects timed and layered to mimic real escalation patterns. 

Step 5: Conduct the Exercise

Facilitate the discussion in a structured manner. Encourage participants to speak through their decisions in real time, not just describe them. Use a whiteboard or shared screen to log actions and decisions for review.

Pro Tip: Keep the tone collaborative, not punitive. Avoid blame and performance evaluation. The goal is learning, not perfection. 

Step 6: Capture Insights and Feedback

Conduct an after-action debrief promptly following the exercise. Document what was missed, where confusion arose, and what responses were strong. Assign owners to improvement items with deadlines.

Pro Tip: Use a structured feedback form and record the session for audit purposes. This supports internal learning and external audit readiness. 

Step 7: Update Your BCP Accordingly

Turn findings into action. Update your BCP to reflect new learnings. Aadjust recovery time objectives, revise escalation paths, and refresh contact details. Share the revised business continuity plan with key stakeholders. Schedule the next review or drill to assess the effectiveness of changes.

Pro Tip: Treat the exercise as part of a continuous improvement cycle, not a one-off event. 

Best Practices and Common Pitfalls

Tabletop business continuity exercises are only as valuable as the realism they offer and the actions they inspire. Here’s how to maximise their effectiveness and the missteps you must avoid. 

Best Practices to Follow

Make the exercise engaging and immersive: Use multimedia, timed injects, role-based scenarios, or even team-based competition to keep participants alert and invested.

• Involve all critical departments: BCP success relies on cross-functional input. Involve IT, HR, legal, facilities, operations, communications, and leadership, not just cybersecurity.
• Encourage candid, realistic discussion: Let participants share honest assessments without fear of blame. Focus on what would happen not what should happen. Simulate pressure, not perfection.
• Use structured documentation: Track decisions, confusion points, escalation delays, and process gaps in real time. Use shared whiteboards or collaboration platforms for transparency.
• Turn insights into action immediately: Assign owners to improvement areas and set deadlines. Circulate updated BCPs and log follow-through. Treat the exercise as a launchpad, not a conclusion. 

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

• Running the session like a checklist: Exercises that feel like tick-box compliance drills won’t surface real gaps. Without unpredictability or pressure, teams won’t simulate true responses.
• Limiting it to IT or security teams: Crisis impact spans across the business. Ignoring HR, communications, or legal leads to narrow insights and missed dependencies.
• Avoiding uncomfortable truths: If everyone agrees too quickly without being critical or no weaknesses are exposed, the scenario may be too safe.
• Failing to document or follow up: Insights that aren’t captured and acted upon are lost. A tabletop with no action plan undermines credibility and fails compliance expectations.
• Skipping regulatory alignment: Exercises not mapped to standards like NCA ECC or SAMA BCP expectations can leave audit gaps, even if the business continuity plan simulation itself was done well. 

How Often Should You Run a BCP Tabletop Exercise?

Business continuity tabletop exercises should be conducted at least annually. They must also be conducted more frequently when risk evolves, operations expand, or regulations change.

In KSA, SAMA mandates that member organisations test their continuity plans and those of critical vendors annually. In critical sectors like finance, healthcare, energy, or logistics within KSA and UAE, quarterly or post-event tabletop drills are advisable. GCC regulators increasingly expect documented evidence of tested business continuity.

In KSA or UAE? Use this update cycle to meet audit expectations under NCA ECC or SAMA governance frameworks.