Be Ready Before It Becomes Reality
Cyberattacks challenge technical teams and leadership alike. Quick decisions under time pressure are unavoidable, and an incident response plan is of limited use if it hasn’t been practically tested.
Our Crisis Management and Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercise (TTX) prepares your organization precisely for this moment. It identifies weaknesses in processes, communication, and decision-making, before they result in high costs in the event of a real incident.
Why a Tabletop Exercise?
A tabletop exercise is the cybersecurity equivalent of a fire exercise. In a moderated simulation, your incident response team and leadership react to a realistic cyber incident – such as ransomware, data exfiltration, supply chain compromise, or insider threats.
The scenario-based simulation training enables your organization to test its response capabilities in a safe environment. It is both practical and realistic.
The aim of this TTX is clear: strengthen teams and processes so your organization can respond quickly, coordinated, and effectively to cyber incidents.
What You Gain from the Tabletop Exercise
The exercise will assess how well your company is prepared for a cyber incident.
You will:
- Test and refine your incident response, business continuity, and disaster recovery plans
- Train decision-making processes under time pressure and uncertainty
- Identify gaps in communication, escalation paths, and unclear roles
- Uncover weaknesses in technical and organizational coordination
- Strengthen collaboration between IT, security, legal, HR, communications, and management teams
- Verify whether documented processes hold up under realistic stress
- Spot where procedures might fail in practical implementation
Together, wedefine the exercise's goal, determine participants and their roles, gather scenario ideas, and clarify the framework.
We develop a realistic attack scenario based on:
- your industry
- your IT environment
- your critical business processes
- typical threats to your organization
Example scenario: A ransomware attack encrypts critical systems while sensitive data is simultaneously exfiltrated.
The exercise begins when the first signs of this incident emerge. The team reacts and makes decisions such as:
- Which systems should be taken offline immediately?
- What communication is required? (employees, customers, partners, authorities, media)
- Should we negotiate with the attackers?
- Activate the disaster recovery plan?
- Etc.
During the simulation, additional updates evolve the scenario.
The moderator ensures the discussion stays focused, challenges assumptions, and documents key decisions.
After the simulation, you will receive a structured analysis including:
- a summary of the exercise
- iIdentified organizational weaknesses
- improvement opportunities in incident response processes
- concrete recommendations for action
Why This Tabletop Exercise Is Unique
Compass Security ensures your TTX stands out:
- Scenarios tailored to your organization
- Realistic exercises based on actual cyberattacks and current threats
- Moderation by experienced incident response experts with real crisis experience
- Focus on technical containment and strategic decision-making by leadership and response teams
- Consideration of regulatory, reputational, and operational impacts
- Structured debrief with actionable recommendations
- Delivery on-site, virtually, or jin a hybrid format
Ultimately, your teams will know how to act quickly, coordinately and effectively in critical situations.
Who Should Participate?
This training is designed for companies looking to improve their emergency response procedures, either as a crisis management exercise or to enhance the effectiveness of their technical emergency organization. A typical TTX includes about 6–10 participants, ideally from various key roles, such as:
- Executive / C-level
- Incident response team
- Security teams
- Business continuity managers
- Legal / compliance
- Communications / PR
No prior experience with tabletop exercises is required.