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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

7 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
RansomwareIntermediateExecutive 2 h

Double extortion: your name on the leak site

Four days after you contained a ransomware attack and restored most systems from backup, a threat intelligence vendor emails your CISO a screenshot. Your company is listed on the group's leak site with a 72-hour countdown and a sample: forty scanned employee passports and a folder of customer contracts. The listing claims 600 GB was taken and will be published unless you pay $2.4 million. Your original investigation found no sign of data theft, and staff were told so. A trade reporter has already left a voicemail asking for comment. Do you engage, and what do you say?

  • CEO / Managing director
  • CISO / Head of security
  • Legal counsel
  • Communications / PR
  • Privacy officer / DPO
  • CFO / Finance
  • Board member
Open exercise
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
RansomwareAdvancedMixed 2 h 30 min

Day five of ransomware recovery: everyone wants to be first

It is day five after ransomware hit a 1,400-person insurance broker. Identity has been rebuilt and the attacker appears to be out. The infrastructure team can restore about twelve systems a day. Twenty-three business owners have each told the CEO their system is the most critical: claims, policy administration, finance, the broker portal, email archives. Two large clients threaten to move their accounts if the portal is not back by Monday. Yesterday a restored file server was found to contain the attacker's remote access tool and had to be taken down again. Who decides what comes back next, and on what basis?

  • CEO / Managing director
  • CIO / CTO
  • CISO / Head of security
  • Incident response lead
  • IT operations
  • CFO / Finance
  • Communications / PR
  • Legal counsel
Open exercise
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
InsiderStarterTechnical 1 h 15 min

A cleanup script deletes a third of the customer records

At 16:30 on a Thursday a developer at a 200-person subscription software company runs a data-retention cleanup script against what he believes is the staging database. It is production. Before he kills it, the script has deleted 38% of customer account records and their linked invoices. The app is still up, but thousands of customers now see empty accounts or ‘user not found’. Support tickets are arriving at 40 a minute. The last full backup finished at 02:00. Nobody acted maliciously. How do you get the data back, and what do you tell customers?

  • Developer / DevOps
  • Cloud engineer
  • Incident response lead
  • Customer support
  • CIO / CTO
  • Communications / PR
Open exercise
RansomwareIntermediateTechnical 2 h

Reinfected on day six of the recovery

Six days into recovering from ransomware at a regional hospital, about 70% of servers have been rebuilt and clinical systems are coming back online. Then EDR on a freshly restored file server flags the same loader seen at the start of the incident, calling out to a new domain. Two domain controllers were restored from backup rather than rebuilt from scratch. Clinicians have been told everything will be back by Monday. Do you halt the recovery, and how do you find what you missed?

  • Incident response lead
  • IT operations
  • SOC analyst
  • CISO / Head of security
  • CIO / CTO
Open exercise
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