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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

6 of 100
OT / ICSAdvancedMixed 2 h 30 min

Ransomware jumps from the office network to the plant floor

It is 05:40 on a Monday at a 900-person auto-parts manufacturer running three shifts. Office laptops started showing ransom notes an hour ago. Now the night-shift supervisor reports that two HMI screens on the stamping line show the same note, and the historian server has stopped updating. The PLCs are still running and the presses are still making parts, but operators can no longer see process values on screen. The first shift arrives in 80 minutes. Do you keep the line running blind, shut it down, or cut the plant off from the corporate network first?

  • OT / plant engineer
  • CISO / Head of security
  • Incident response lead
  • IT operations
  • CEO / Managing director
  • Legal counsel
  • Communications / PR
Open exercise
OT / ICSAdvancedTechnical 2 h 30 min

The safety system trips while you are hunting an intruder in the plant

You are on day two of investigating suspicious traffic inside the control network of a chemical blending plant. Responders have a laptop on the OT switch capturing packets. At 14:20 the safety instrumented system trips reactor R-3 on high pressure, venting to the flare and closing the feed valves. The control room saw the pressure transmitter spike, but two field gauges read normal throughout. Operators want to reset the safety system and restart the batch, which is worth $400,000. The responders want the safety controller left untouched until they know whether anyone has reached it. Who decides?

  • OT / plant engineer
  • Incident response lead
  • CISO / Head of security
  • SOC analyst
  • IT operations
Open exercise
Outage / resilienceIntermediateMixed 1 h 45 min

DDoS and an extortion note on the busiest shopping day

It is 09:00 on Black Friday at an online homeware retailer that takes 18% of its annual revenue in the next four days. Requests to the checkout API jump to 40 times normal, response times pass ten seconds and the site starts returning errors. An email arrives at the press address: pay 5 bitcoin or the site stays down all weekend. Your CDN has basic DDoS protection, but the checkout API sits outside it on a separate hostname. Marketing has a promotional email going to 3 million customers at 10:00. What do you do in the next hour?

  • CIO / CTO
  • IT operations
  • Cloud engineer
  • CISO / Head of security
  • CFO / Finance
  • Communications / PR
  • Customer support
Open exercise
CrisisStarterExecutive 1 h 15 min

A law firm announces it is 'investigating' your breach

Four days after you notified 210,000 customers that their names, addresses and loyalty account details were exposed, a plaintiffs' law firm publishes a press release saying it is investigating claims against your retail chain and inviting affected customers to get in touch. A demand letter citing a state privacy statute arrives the next day. Customer support is fielding calls asking whether people should join. Your forensic firm is still finishing its report. What gets written down now may be read in court later.

  • Legal counsel
  • CEO / Managing director
  • Communications / PR
  • Customer support
  • CISO / Head of security
  • CFO / Finance
Open exercise
CrisisStarterMixed 1 h

A journalist calls before you know anything

At 16:45 the communications team takes a call from a reporter at a national business publication. She says a source has shown her files that appear to come from your HR system, including salary data for senior staff, and she plans to publish tomorrow morning. She wants a comment by 20:00. Your security team has no open incident, no alert matches, and nobody has seen the files. You have three hours and fifteen minutes to find out whether it is true and decide what you will say.

  • Communications / PR
  • CISO / Head of security
  • Legal counsel
  • HR
  • CEO / Managing director
  • SOC analyst
Open exercise
RansomwareIntermediateMixed 2 h

Ransomware, DDoS and extortion in the same week

Monday: ransomware encrypts file servers at your online travel agency, but customer bookings still work. Wednesday: after you decline to engage, a DDoS takes the booking site down at peak hour. Thursday: the attacker emails journalists a sample of passport scans and threatens to call your largest corporate customers. Each pressure point lands on a different team that is already exhausted. The attacker's latest message sets a 24-hour deadline and promises the DDoS will stop the moment you pay.

  • CISO / Head of security
  • Incident response lead
  • IT operations
  • Communications / PR
  • CEO / Managing director
  • Legal counsel
  • Privacy officer / DPO
  • CFO / Finance
Open exercise
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