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4 MIN READ
Commentary
TOP 6 MISTAKES IN INCIDENT RESPONSE TABLETOP EXERCISES
Avoid these errors to get the greatest value from your incident response
training sessions.
Ryan René Rosado
Security Solution Architect, Trace3
October 17, 2023
Source: Vladislav Zaretskiy via Alamy Stock Photo
PDF
An incident response tabletop exercise is a discussion-based practice that uses
a hypothetical situation to coach a technical or executive audience through the
cybersecurity incident response life cycle. During the exercise, you don't alter
any technical controls nor introduce malware into the IT environment.
Nevertheless, you must tailor the tabletop exercise to your organization's
technical environment, industry, sector, and business objectives.
Due to the discussion-based nature, most organizations consider a tabletop
exercise to be a relatively easy training session that consists of a long
conversation while looking at PowerPoint slides. However, if it's not performed
properly, it can be easy to lose the efficiency and value a tabletop exercise
can provide.
6 COMMON TABLETOP EXERCISE MISTAKES
The following are six of the most common mistakes organizations make when doing
incident response tabletop exercises.
Not taking a social approach. Most tabletop exercises involve between eight and
25 people. If the facilitator enables only one or two technical leaders to
speak, it quickly becomes a two- or four-hour lecture, rather than a training.
No one wants to be talked at for hours on end; the words go in one ear and out
the other. A discussion-based approach can help ensure efficiency, but solely
conversing about the current threat is where more tabletop exercises fall short.
Instead, build a social approach into your tabletop exercise and related
materials. Encourage all participants to begin each discussion by brainstorming
out loud, then collaborating and debating the ideas, and finally making
decisions about the incident response plan — which might be deciding it's best
to take no action at this time.
Not varying the participants. Another mistake many organizations make is
including the exact same people in every tabletop exercise. There can be a lot
of value in adding different teams or stakeholders for different scenarios. For
example, I recently hosted a tabletop exercise that included an organization's
board of directors so that they could make appropriate-level decisions and
insights on the new SEC disclosure requirements. Tabletop exercises can speak to
a lot of different cybersecurity-related risks, such as financial loss, legal
impacts, and reputation.
Facilitators can make the exercise multidimensional by introducing the business
impacts of cybersecurity incidents. For example, when facilitating a ransomware
scenario with an executive audience, I try to address the organization's ability
to make payroll (a problem that was recently observed in ransomware attacks
against resorts and casinos), a legitimate issue that many organizations may
face. This highlights ransomware's operational impacts and risks and gets the
finance team more involved. Another example is inviting legal and human
resources professionals to provide input for insider threat scenarios, which
have multiple potential damage or risk dimensions.
Repeatedly using the same scenario threat type. For the past few years,
organizations have most often focused on ransomware scenarios in both technical
and executive tabletops. But there are many other focus areas that can be
evaluated in a tabletop exercise.
Changing the threat type can help an organization be more robust, well-rounded,
and resilient. If an organization is prepared for a malware incident but not an
insider threat-related data breach, it remains vulnerable to various threats.
Choosing a "doomsday" scenario. Some tabletop exercises don't adequately gauge
the scenario's impact and exaggerate the potential damage. The scenario needs to
feel realistic but not be so horrible that participants feel helpless and
defeated. This dampens the value of cybersecurity training, making people never
want to do a tabletop exercise ever again.
The tabletop exercise should be fun, entertaining at times, and continually
motivating. The scenario must be shocking enough to provide insight and
challenge participants but not impossible to overcome.
Not implementing the lessons learned. When an organization doesn't implement the
recommendations from a tabletop exercise, nearly the same exact lessons learned
will come up in the next tabletop exercise. That makes the entire exercise
almost wasteful of people's time.
A tabletop exercise can identify significant areas of opportunity. Always have
at least one notetaker to scribe the brainstorming, collaboration, and decisions
made during the exercise. Compare those notes to the lessons learned, best
practices, and priorities for putting them into action and maturing the
organization's cyber resilience.
Not scoping the exercise and expectations correctly. The last mistake many
leaders make is expecting the tabletop exercise to identify all the problems or
vulnerabilities in an environment. Because the tabletop exercise is based on one
scenario, it can reveal risks and vulnerabilities associated with that specific
threat type.
While different threat types have some common vulnerabilities and risks,
different scenarios will uncover different weaknesses across people, skill sets,
technology, and policies, depending upon the audience.
This is another reason it's important to change the scenario focus for each
tabletop exercise: It gives the team safe, realistic exposures to the variety of
threats they are working diligently every day to protect the business from.
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