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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.

Who's in the room?

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

Matching exercises

3 of 100
RansomwareIntermediateMixed 1 h 45 min

Ransomware hits payroll two days before payday

It is Wednesday morning. Payroll for 2,300 staff must reach the bank by 14:00 Thursday to land on Friday. Overnight, ransomware encrypted the HR and payroll servers and the file share holding timesheets. IT estimates at least four days to restore. Last month's bank file still sits in a finance team member's email. Union representatives have heard rumours and are asking whether people will be paid this week. The CFO asks the room: can we just re-run last month's payroll? What do you decide, and how do you tell 2,300 people?

  • CFO / Finance
  • HR
  • CISO / Head of security
  • IT operations
  • Communications / PR
  • Legal counsel
  • CEO / Managing director
Open exercise
Third partyStarterExecutive 1 h 15 min

Your payroll provider goes down two days before payday

It is Wednesday morning and 2,600 staff are due to be paid on Friday. Your outsourced payroll provider has been offline since last night. Its status page says "investigating a security incident affecting some systems" and gives no recovery time. Your payroll team cannot submit the final run, and the provider has the only copy of this month's calculated pay, tax and deductions. Social media already has posts from employees at other companies using the same provider. Your union representative has asked HR whether pay will arrive on time. The CEO wants a decision by noon.

  • CFO / Finance
  • HR
  • CEO / Managing director
  • Vendor / procurement manager
  • Communications / PR
  • Legal counsel
Open exercise
Outage / resilienceStarterExecutive 1 h 30 min

Your contact-centre platform goes down during a storm

A severe storm has hit the region served by a 1,200-person home insurer, and claims calls are at five times normal volume. At 08:20 the cloud contact-centre platform your agents use for calls, chat and call recording goes down across the provider’s entire region. The provider’s status page says ‘investigating’ and gives no estimate. Agents can still log into the claims system but cannot take calls. Customers with flooded homes are getting a dead line, and local radio has started asking why. Your contract’s service credit is worth one month’s fees. What is your plan for the next eight hours?

  • CIO / CTO
  • CEO / Managing director
  • Vendor / procurement manager
  • Customer support
  • Communications / PR
  • CFO / Finance
Open exercise
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