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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.

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Executive
Business
Technical

Matching exercises

9 of 100
Data breachIntermediateMixed 2 h

Your customer database is for sale on a forum

A security researcher messages your support inbox with a link. On a criminal forum, someone is selling what they call your full customer database: 1.2 million rows with names, emails, password hashes and the last four digits of cards, for $8,000. The 20-row sample contains real customers, and one is a member of your own staff. Nothing in your logs points to a breach. An engineer remembers a copy of production restored onto a test server for a migration two years ago. The researcher plans to publish a blog post on Friday. Where do you start?

  • CISO / Head of security
  • Incident response lead
  • Cloud engineer
  • Privacy officer / DPO
  • Legal counsel
  • Communications / PR
  • CEO / Managing director
Open exercise
Data breachAdvancedExecutive 2 h 30 min

One breach, five notification clocks

Your investigation confirms that an attacker had access to a customer support platform for 19 days. It held records for 210,000 people across the EU, the UK, California, Texas and Australia, and some records include government ID numbers. The company is listed in the US and provides services to several EU banks. Outside counsel joins at 10:00 and lays out at least five deadlines, some measured from 'awareness' and some from 'determination'. The board chair wants to know when this becomes public. When did each clock start, and what goes out first?

  • Legal counsel
  • Privacy officer / DPO
  • CISO / Head of security
  • CEO / Managing director
  • Board member
  • Communications / PR
  • CFO / Finance
Open exercise
CloudIntermediateMixed 1 h 45 min

A researcher finds your customer exports in a public storage bucket

A security researcher emails your support address on a Friday afternoon. They have found a cloud storage bucket, publicly listable, that holds nightly CSV exports from your customer platform: names, email addresses, phone numbers and partial payment details for roughly 210,000 customers in the EU, UK and US. They attach a screenshot of the file list and say they will publish a write-up in seven days. Your cloud team confirms the bucket is yours and was made public eighteen months ago for a one-off analytics project. Access logging on it was never switched on.

  • CISO / Head of security
  • Privacy officer / DPO
  • Legal counsel
  • Cloud engineer
  • Communications / PR
  • Customer support
Open exercise
Third partyIntermediateMixed 1 h 45 min

Your help-desk SaaS provider is breached and its tokens into your systems are stolen

Your help-desk software provider emails all customers at 18:00: an attacker accessed its production environment and "may have obtained" OAuth tokens that customers granted for integrations. Your instance has integrations with your CRM, your file-sharing platform and your code host, all granted with broad scopes two years ago by someone who has since left. The provider's notice gives no indicators, no timeline and a link to a status page. Your support team has 4,000 open tickets, many with customer attachments. The provider's account manager is not answering.

  • Vendor / procurement manager
  • CISO / Head of security
  • SOC analyst
  • Privacy officer / DPO
  • Customer support
  • Legal counsel
Open exercise
PhysicalStarterMixed 1 h

Overnight break-in: eleven laptops and the branch file server gone

Police call your office manager at 06:30: a ground-floor window at your accounting firm’s branch office was smashed overnight. When staff arrive they find eleven laptops missing from desks, plus the small network storage box from the comms cupboard that the branch used for scanned client documents. IT believes the laptops are encrypted but is not sure about two older ones. Nobody knows exactly what was on the storage box or whether it was backed up. Tax season starts in three weeks. Is this a theft or a data breach?

  • IT operations
  • Privacy officer / DPO
  • CISO / Head of security
  • Physical security / facilities
  • Legal counsel
  • CEO / Managing director
Open exercise
Data breachIntermediateExecutive 1 h 30 min

Patient records from your clinic group appear on a leak site

A journalist emails your communications team at 16:10 on a Thursday. She has a screenshot of a leak-site post naming your 22-clinic outpatient group, with a sample file of 300 patient records: names, dates of birth, diagnoses and insurance numbers. The post claims 1.2 million records and gives you five days before full publication. Your security team has seen no ransomware and no obvious intrusion. The journalist wants comment by 18:00 and says two patients have already contacted her. You do not yet know whether the data is real, current or even yours. What happens before 18:00?

  • CEO / Managing director
  • Legal counsel
  • Privacy officer / DPO
  • Communications / PR
  • CISO / Head of security
  • Customer support
Open exercise
Third partyStarterExecutive 1 h 15 min

A billing vendor's breach starts your HIPAA notification clock

Your medical billing company, a business associate that processes claims for your 180-physician practice, sends a two-paragraph email: an unauthorised party accessed one of their file servers 'between March and June' and some of your patients may be affected. They found it 41 days ago. They have not said which patients, what data, or whether it was encrypted. Your compliance officer asks when your own 60-day clock started, and whether it started without you. Patients are calling the front desk after a local news story. What do you need from the vendor today, and who owns the answer?

  • Privacy officer / DPO
  • Legal counsel
  • CISO / Head of security
  • Vendor / procurement manager
  • Communications / PR
  • Customer support
Open exercise
M&AIntermediateExecutive 2 h

Due diligence finds the target was breached

Your company is six weeks from signing an agreement to buy a 300-person payments start-up. During security due diligence your team finds credentials for the target's production cloud account for sale on a criminal marketplace, dated four months ago. The founders say they had 'a minor incident' that was handled and that no notifications were needed. Their logs only go back 30 days. The deal team wants a recommendation this week: walk away, reprice, add protections in the agreement, or demand an independent investigation first.

  • CISO / Head of security
  • CEO / Managing director
  • CFO / Finance
  • Legal counsel
  • Board member
  • Privacy officer / DPO
Open exercise
Data breachIntermediateMixed 2 h

Five notification clocks start at once

A misconfigured analytics export at your online learning company exposed records for 640,000 students and staff in the EU, the UK, the United States, Canada and Australia. Fields include names, email addresses, dates of birth and, for 12,000 US users, partial payment data. You confirmed the exposure at 09:00 today. Each jurisdiction has different triggers, deadlines and regulators, and some of your customers are universities that are controllers in their own right. Counsel wants a single notification plan by end of day.

  • Privacy officer / DPO
  • Legal counsel
  • CISO / Head of security
  • Communications / PR
  • Customer support
  • Cloud engineer
Open exercise
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