An incident response tabletop exercise is an activity that involves testing the processes outlined in an incident response plan.
Attack simulations are run to ensure incident response team members know their roles and responsibilities - and whether they are sufficient - in response to a given attack scenario.
Incident response tabletop exercises can be discussion-based or operational.
Discussion-based tabletop exercises involve the incident response team talking through the events of a specific security incident.
As mentioned, incident response tabletop exercises help validate the effectiveness of an incident response plan.
Within business continuity, technology disaster recovery, cybersecurity incident response and other resilience-focused disciplines, tabletop exercising is an essential activity.
Several standards have been developed for exercising and incident response.
To ensure an incident response program is compliant with the standards, exercising and a documented report of exercising are necessary.
Evidence of incident response plan exercising might also be required for auditing purposes.
Incident response plans and the accompanying steps for initial response are essential to BC/DR and cybersecurity planning processes.
Incident response exercise scenarios can encompass many different events, from biological attacks to pandemics to natural disasters.
Each incident response scenario can be developed into an exercise by expanding the premise of the incident into a series of steps to make the exercise realistic.
To design a tabletop exercise, base it on the scenario occurring, what could happen during said incident and the responses to address it.
This downloadable incident response tabletop exercise template can be customized to your organization's unique incident response tabletop exercises.
Injects challenge exercise participants and encourage them to modify or adapt their incident response approaches during what could be rapidly changing circumstances.
Security team examines alarms, makes initial assessment of attack vector and contacts the incident response team.
Security team initiates incident response plan and alerts incident response team members of the plan launch.
An incident response tabletop exercise should follow the steps and procedures laid out in an incident response plan.
Just as incident response plans should be reviewed and updated annually - at a minimum - so should incident response tabletop exercises.
Keep the incident response plan and tabletop exercises up to date and as current as possible.
This Cyber News was published on www.techtarget.com. Publication date: Wed, 17 Jan 2024 17:43:05 +0000