Tabletop Cybersecurity Exercises
Practice makes prepared. Our tabletop exercises simulate realistic cyber incidents in a safe environment, helping your team develop the coordination and decision-making skills needed to respond effectively to real security events.
Our Tabletop Exercise Process: Engaging and Actionable
Incident response isn't instinctive—it's learned through practice. Our tabletop exercises provide a structured, low-stress environment for your team to develop the muscle memory and coordination needed when seconds count.
Scenario Design & Customization
Timeline: Week 1-2
Your Time: 1-2 hours scoping interview
We develop realistic incident scenarios tailored to your industry's threat landscape, technology environment, and compliance requirements. Financial advisors face different threats than municipalities or healthcare providers. Your tabletop simulates ransomware attacks, data breaches, insider threats, or supply chain compromises most relevant to your organization—not generic scenarios from five years ago.
Pre-Exercise Preparation
Timeline: Week 3
Deliverables: Participant briefing materials
Participants receive background materials explaining the scenario setup, their roles, and exercise objectives—but not the specific incident details. We review your current incident response plan to identify gaps the exercise should stress-test. You'll know what we're evaluating (communication, decision-making, escalation) without knowing exactly what crisis we'll simulate.
Facilitated Exercise Execution
Timeline: 2-4 hour session
Communication: In-person or virtual facilitation
Our facilitator walks your team through the evolving incident using "inject cards" that introduce new developments: systems failing, media inquiries, regulatory notifications, customer complaints. Your team makes real decisions: isolate systems, notify customers, engage law enforcement, activate cyber insurance. We observe how your team coordinates, communicates, and makes decisions under pressure—without the actual pressure of a real breach.
Debrief & Improvement Roadmap
Timeline: Immediate post-exercise + written report
Support: Follow-up consultation included
Immediately after the exercise, we facilitate a "hot debrief" capturing lessons learned while they're fresh. Within one week, you receive a detailed after-action report identifying gaps in your incident response plan, recommending specific improvements, and providing updated response playbooks. We don't just find problems—we tell you exactly how to fix them.
What to Expect When Working With Us
📋 Deliverables You'll Receive:
- • Customized scenario based on your threat landscape
- • Pre-exercise briefing materials for all participants
- • Facilitated exercise session (2-4 hours)
- • After-action report with gap analysis
- • Updated incident response playbooks and recommendations
💬 How We Communicate:
- • Initial scoping call to understand your environment
- • Scenario review with leadership (optional)
- • Professional facilitation during exercise
- • Immediate hot debrief after exercise
- • 30-day follow-up to discuss implementation progress
Why Choose Guarded's Tabletop Exercises?
Expert-led simulations that prepare your team for real-world cyber incidents
Realistic Scenarios
Industry-specific incident scenarios based on real-world threats facing your sector. We simulate ransomware attacks, data breaches, and compliance incidents relevant to your organization.
Team Collaboration
Bring your entire incident response team together in a low-stress environment. Practice coordination between IT, legal, communications, and executive leadership.
Immediate Feedback
Expert-led debriefing sessions identify gaps in your incident response plans and provide actionable recommendations for improvement.
Regulatory Compliance
Satisfy compliance requirements for incident response testing under NIST, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and financial regulations with documented exercises.
Benefits for Your Organization
Transform incident response from theory to practice with measurable improvements
Regulatory Confidence
Meet compliance requirements for incident response testing with documented tabletop exercises that satisfy NIST, HIPAA, and financial regulatory expectations.
Strengthened Cyber Defenses
Identify weaknesses in your incident response capabilities before a real incident occurs. Build muscle memory for crisis response through realistic practice.
Reduced Impact of Cyber Incidents
Faster, more coordinated incident response reduces downtime, data loss, and reputational damage when real security incidents occur.
Customized Risk Mitigation
Exercises tailored to your organization's specific threat landscape, technology environment, and regulatory requirements—not generic scenarios.
Enhanced Team Coordination
Improve communication and coordination across departments. Clarify roles and responsibilities before the pressure of a real incident.
Improved Stakeholder Trust
Demonstrate preparedness to boards, regulators, clients, and insurance providers with documented incident response testing programs.
What Sets Our Tabletop Exercises Apart
Not all tabletop exercises are created equal. Our approach combines realistic scenarios, expert facilitation, and actionable recommendations to deliver measurable improvements in your incident response capabilities.
Industry-Specific Threat Realism
We simulate attacks actually targeting your industry—ransomware groups hitting municipalities, business email compromise targeting accounting firms, or patient data breaches affecting healthcare providers. Scenarios include realistic technical details, regulatory notification requirements, and stakeholder pressures specific to your sector. You practice responding to threats you'll actually face, not generic "hacker breaks in" scenarios.
Facilitated by Incident Responders
Our facilitators have responded to real security incidents—ransomware attacks, data breaches, insider threats. We know how incidents actually unfold because we've lived through them at 2am with clients' systems down. This real-world experience informs scenario design, identifies realistic challenges, and provides credible recommendations based on what actually works under pressure, not textbook theory.
Focus on Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
Real incidents unfold with incomplete information, conflicting priorities, and time pressure. Our exercises simulate this reality: Should you shut down systems before confirming the attack scope? How do you communicate with customers when you don't know what data was accessed? When do you engage law enforcement or notify regulators? We stress-test your team's ability to make judgment calls with imperfect information—the core skill in incident response.
Actionable Improvement Roadmaps
Many tabletops end with vague "improve communication" recommendations. Ours provide specific, actionable improvements: updated escalation matrices with actual phone numbers, revised communication templates for different stakeholder groups, documented decision trees for common scenarios, and vendor contact lists with contract numbers. You finish with concrete deliverables you can implement immediately, not abstract suggestions.
Our Quality Commitment
Every tabletop exercise includes a written after-action report documenting gaps identified, decisions made, and specific recommendations for improvement. We provide updated incident response playbooks incorporating lessons learned—not generic templates, but customized guidance for your organization.
Our goal isn't to "check the compliance box" for incident response testing. It's to genuinely prepare your team so when a real incident occurs, they execute with confidence rather than panic. We measure success by how much better prepared you are after the exercise than before.
Complementary Security Services
Explore our complementary services to build a comprehensive security program
Penetration Testing
Test your defenses with real attack simulations. Use penetration test findings to create realistic tabletop exercise scenarios.
vCISO Services
Strategic incident response leadership. Our vCISOs provide guidance during exercises and help build your security program.
Managed Cybersecurity
24/7 security operations and incident response. Practice your response with exercises, then get continuous protection.
Get Your Team Prepared
Contact us today to schedule your customized tabletop exercise. We'll design realistic scenarios specific to your industry and regulatory requirements.