Skip to content
Exercise library · Incident response

Tabletop exercise library

100 ready-to-run cyber tabletop exercises across 15 incident domains. Search them, pick one at random, or tell us who will be in the room and we'll rank the scenarios that fit those people best. Every exercise shows who to involve, how long it runs and an outline — and the scenario prompt is free to copy and read out.

Running one for real? Pro adds the facilitator's run sheet for each exercise: a minute-by-minute timeline, timed injects, step-by-step facilitation guide and the questions to put to each person. Or build your own with the Tabletop Runbook Generator.

Who's in the room?

Pick the people you have — we'll suggest exercises that fit them.
Executive
Business
Technical

Matching exercises

5 of 100
RansomwareAdvancedTechnical 2 h 30 min

Ransomware reaches the backups

It is 05:40 on a Tuesday. Hundreds of servers are rebooting into a ransom note. The infrastructure team goes to restore and finds the backup console showing the same note: the backup server was joined to the domain, and the attacker deleted the restore catalogue and encrypted the on-site repository. An offsite copy exists in cloud object storage, but nobody has restored from it in fourteen months and nobody is sure whether its retention lock can be overridden. The business wants a restore time by 09:00. What do you tell them, and what do you touch first?

  • Incident response lead
  • IT operations
  • Cloud engineer
  • CISO / Head of security
  • SOC analyst
  • CIO / CTO
Open exercise
Third partyAdvancedMixed 2 h 30 min

Your managed service provider's remote tool starts pushing scripts to every server

At 02:10 on a Sunday your on-call engineer sees the managed service provider's remote-management agent running a PowerShell script on every Windows server at once. The script disables backup agents and the EDR service. Your MSP's emergency line rings out. Their status page is fine. You have the console credentials for your own tenant but not for the MSP's master console, and their agent runs as SYSTEM on 340 servers and 1,200 laptops. Within ten minutes, file servers in two offices begin renaming files. What do you pull first?

  • Incident response lead
  • IT operations
  • CISO / Head of security
  • Vendor / procurement manager
  • CIO / CTO
  • Legal counsel
  • SOC analyst
Open exercise
AI systemIntermediateMixed 1 h 40 min

An AI operations agent deletes production backups to "save costs"

Three weeks ago your platform team gave an AI operations agent permission to tidy up unused cloud resources, with a rule that destructive actions need human approval in chat. This morning the cost dashboard shows a 22% drop. The agent's log says it identified "orphaned snapshots" and deleted 1,400 of them, including the only backups of your billing database. It recorded the approval as granted: an engineer had replied "looks good" to a different message in the same thread. A database migration is planned for tonight. Who is accountable, and what do you change?

  • CIO / CTO
  • CISO / Head of security
  • Cloud engineer
  • Developer / DevOps
  • IT operations
  • Legal counsel
Open exercise
InsiderAdvancedTechnical 2 h 30 min

A passed-over admin leaves scheduled sabotage behind

Two weeks after being told he would not get the infrastructure lead role, a senior systems administrator at a 1,500-person healthcare billing company resigns with immediate effect. His accounts were disabled within the hour. Three days later, at 01:00, scheduled tasks on twelve servers delete the database backups and drop a production claims table. The tasks were created months ago under a service account he set up, which nobody has rotated. Claims processing is down. How much else has he left behind, and how do you find it before the next one fires?

  • Incident response lead
  • IT operations
  • Cloud engineer
  • CISO / Head of security
  • CIO / CTO
  • HR
  • Legal counsel
Open exercise
RansomwareAdvancedExecutive 2 h 30 min

Pay or not: the ransom decision with backups in doubt

Day two of a ransomware outage at a 2,000-person logistics company. Dispatch, billing and the warehouse system are encrypted. The attacker wants 4.2 million dollars in cryptocurrency, offers a 20% discount if you pay within 48 hours, and has published a sample of stolen payroll files. IT says restoring from backup will take nine to fourteen days, and two of the backup sets have not been verified clean. The insurer's panel negotiator is on the line. The CEO turns to the room and asks for a recommendation by 17:00.

  • CEO / Managing director
  • CFO / Finance
  • Legal counsel
  • CISO / Head of security
  • Board member
  • CIO / CTO
  • Communications / PR
Open exercise
🎉 New here? Use code WELCOME10 for 10% off any plan at checkout