Navigating Crisis: Selecting the Ideal Tabletop Exercise for Incident Response and Business Continuity

Article

November 11, 2024

Contributor:
Robert Clifton | Information Assurance & Cybersecurity Manager

In today’s interconnected business landscape, companies face various threats that can disrupt operations, impact revenue, and compromise sensitive information. To prepare for these risks, businesses should conduct appropriate tests that simulate potential scenarios. Among these exercises, incident response (IR) and business continuity (BC) tabletop exercises are two distinct methods for testing an organization's preparedness. While both aim to enhance organizational resilience, they differ significantly in their focus, scope, and objectives.

Incident Response Tabletop Exercise: Focus on Cybersecurity and Crisis Management

An IR tabletop exercise typically revolves around cybersecurity incidents or other specific, time-sensitive crises. The goal is to assess how well an organization can handle security issues.

This includes finding and responding to security breaches, malware infections, and other cyberattacks. The aim is to reduce the impact of these threats. The scenarios used in an IR tabletop may include events like ransomware attacks, data breaches, insider threats, or denial-of-service attacks.

The main goal of an IR exercise is to contain and reduce the impact of an incident. This needs a coordinated response from different departments, including IT, legal, communications, and senior management. Key objectives include:

Assessing response protocols: How quickly can the IT or security teams detect the incident? Are there established procedures to escalate the issue? Is communication flowing smoothly to the necessary decision-makers?
Coordinating roles and responsibilities: Each team must understand its role in the response. For example, the IT team handles technical aspects, while legal and communications teams manage regulatory reporting and media inquiries.
Communication and reporting: Communication is critical in an IR exercise. The executive team needs to be updated in real time. Organizations must also meet legal obligations, like breach reporting deadlines. Providing timely and accurate updates to stakeholders is vital for managing reputational risk.
Post-incident recovery: An IR exercise also examines how the organization handles post-incident recovery. How quickly can the organization restore the compromised systems to normalcy? What measures are in place to prevent recurrence?

The main goal of a tabletop exercise is to help the organization respond quickly to cybersecurity threats. This type of exercise prepares the team to act when needed. It focuses on technical solutions and communication during the chaos of a breach or attack.

Business Continuity Tabletop Exercise: Ensuring Operational Resilience

IR exercises focus on specific cybersecurity events, while BC tabletop exercises cover the whole organization. They assess the ability to keep operations running during or after major disruptions. The events simulated in a BC exercise often involve natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes or earthquakes), pandemics, power outages, supply chain disruptions, or even long-term facility failures.

The primary focus of a BC exercise is to test how well an organization can maintain critical business functions during prolonged disruptions. This involves:

Continuity of operations: Testing the organization's ability to keep essential services running. Are there redundancies for critical systems like payroll, communications or customer support? Are backup facilities available if a primary location is inaccessible?
Employee safety and well-being: In a BC scenario, ensuring the safety of employees is paramount. This may include evacuation plans, remote work arrangements, or provisions for employee support during prolonged disruptions.
Supply chain management: Assessing how external partners and suppliers are affected by the disruption and ensuring that the supply chain remains intact or has contingencies.
Recovery and long-term resilience: The organization must evaluate how quickly it can return to normal operations, identify alternative methods to continue service delivery, and adapt to the longer-term effects of the disruption.

A BC tabletop exercise goes beyond the immediate crisis response of an IR exercise, focusing on sustained operational resilience and the ability to maintain business functions over an extended period.

Key Differences Between IR and BC Tabletop Exercises

Both types of tabletop exercises aim to prepare organizations for disruptions. However, they differ in focus, timeframe and scope. Below, we break down those differences:

Incident Response (IR) vs Business Continuity (BC) Tabletop Exercises
	IR Tabletop Exercise	BC Tabletop Exercise
Focus	Cybersecurity and crisis management	Continued functioning of critical business process
Timeframe	Fast action required: Address immediate threats	Long-term: Focus on disruptions that could last days, weeks or even months
Scope	Technical in nature, involving IT and security teams	Requires broader participation across the organization, including HR, facilities, operations, and external partners

Choosing the Right Tabletop Exercise

Selecting the right tabletop exercise depends on the specific risks the organization faces and the objectives they wish to achieve from the exercise. Companies can utilize either their in-house IT department or a . To do this, businesses should consider the following:

Risk landscape: Evaluate the organization’s most likely risks. If the company is in a sector with high cybersecurity risks (e.g., finance or healthcare), an IR tabletop might be more relevant. If natural disasters or supply chain disruptions become more likely, you could prioritize a BC exercise.
Organizational vulnerabilities: Conduct an internal risk assessment to identify weaknesses. For example, if previous audits revealed issues with disaster recovery planning, a BC exercise may help address those gaps.
Stakeholder concerns: Consider external pressures, such as regulatory requirements or customer expectations. Some industries require regular incident response drills, while others may focus on business continuity to assure clients of uninterrupted service.
Past incidents: Learn from historical events. If the organization has faced data breaches or prolonged power outages in the past, replicating these scenarios in a tabletop exercise can help improve preparedness and resilience.

Management can make tabletop exercises relevant and useful by aligning them with the organization’s specific business risks and goals. This approach leads to better crisis management and stronger operational resilience for future challenges.

How Cherry Bekaert Can Help

Ensuring business continuity and effective incident response is crucial for maintaining smooth operations during a disaster. Cherry Bekaert’s experienced Information Assurance & Cybersecurity team can assist you in selecting the most suitable tabletop exercise. They can also facilitate these tabletop exercises and deliver results for auditors. Additionally, our professionals can review business continuity plans and monitor and evaluate test outcomes in real time.

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