Tabletop Exercise

A discussion-based, simulation exercise where key staff gather (literally around a table, though often virtual now) to walk through their response to a hypothetical incident scenario.

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There's no live-fire technical activity; instead, participants mentally step through the Incident Response Plan: "Okay, a ransomware attack hits our file server - what do we do first? Who calls whom? Do we have backups ready?" A facilitator might introduce twists ("Now the attacker is demanding ransom, and our customer data is on a leak site - what next?") to test how the team adapts.

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The goal is to practice the incident response plan in a low-stress environment, find any gaps or confusion in it, and train the team on their roles.

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For an SMB, a tabletop exercise could be a simple one-hour meeting where you role-play an incident ("Our only database got encrypted by ransomware last night") and see if your plan holds up: Did everyone know their task? Did we have the right phone numbers and backups?

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These exercises are invaluable because they reveal weaknesses in your preparedness before a real incident does. BrightShield even includes a "Tabletop Exercise Generator" feature - recognizing that practicing incidents is as important as writing plans.