A security incident can escalate rapidly and pose significant issues for an organisation, mainly if staff are unsure of their roles and how they should react. Testing and planning can help organisations to assess how their team would react to different security scenarios.
Cybersecurity incident response tabletop scenarios can be used to aid this process.
What is an Incident Response Tabletop Simulation? Response tabletop scenarios are discussion-based exercises that simulate real-world cybersecurity incidents.
Participants are told a fictional incident and asked to describe how they would respond to it by identifying analyzing containing, communicating, and resolving. Typically, these exercises do not include an attack or any modification to the production system.
They tend to concentrate more on the decision-making communication responsibilities, policies and inter-team coordination. A scenario can be tailored to an organisation’s technology infrastructure, operational risk and security needs.
Multiple scenarios could be used to test various elements of the organisation’s ability to respond to incidents.
For instance a scenario involving a phishing attack could be used to test the process by which employees report suspicious messages to the organization and the procedure used by security teams to investigate attacks on user accounts.
One of the ways that a ransomware scenario can be used is to test processes for isolating infected hosts, protecting backups, communicating with end-users, and returning critical services back to normal.
A data breach scenario can be used to identify “what data is potentially compromised, what is the extent of the incident and what notification procedures are appropriate”.
[ii] Alternatively, we could be facing threat actor scenarios including insider threats, hack of s credentials, cloud security issues, Web site compromises, supply-chain attacks or prolonged system outages.
Clarification of roles and responsibilities is another key objectiveit’s critical that participants are clear about who is in charge of the response, who is in charge of technical investigations, who is responsible for liaison, and who makes operational decisions. A second aim is to review current procedures.
Variations in the way incidents are handled can bring to light poorly worded instructions, incomplete escalation procedures, communication problems or outdated phone numbers.
Tabletop exercises are useful for evaluating the speed with which groups respond when there isn’t enough information. Incidents in reality tend to evolve slowly so participants need to adapt to new data.
The typical starting point of exercise is a specified scenario, with specific objectives. A facilitator gives an situation or problem statement, and gives information in a stepwise way. Then participants discuss their anticipated actions, decisions and communication needs. The facilitator can add further developments during the exercise, e.g.
‘There are more of your systems compromised’, ‘this is getting press attention’, ‘Customers are starting to complain’, ‘the scope of the incident has increased’. This is to see whether teams are able to respond as a result.
Post-exercise the team should do a debrief and record the results. The results can becategorised bypersonal process technology, communication andgovernance.
Why Regular Testing is important
The findings of one training session may expose some weaknesses only. Though, repeated test sessions could give you a much better picture of your preparedness for emergency scenarios. Incident response tabletop simulation could reflect changing systems personnel business processes, and cybersecurity threats.
The results of the exercises can be integrated in incident response planning, employee training, communication plans, and technical controls.
Summary
Incident response tabletop exercises enable organisations to assess their readiness for cyber security through a series of realistic discussion-based scenarios. Roles communication decision-making, escalation, and recovery processes can be tested, because of this helping organisations spot shortcomings before they happen in real life. Consistently doing training and maintaining a records database on what you have learned will help you develop a well-coordinated and responsive plan to face cybersecurity incidents.