A cyber incident is not the time to decide who is responsible for shutting down systems, contacting legal counsel, notifying customers, or discussing with leadership. It’s important that those decisions be rehearsed before the pressure is on. For Austin businesses that use cloud tools, vendors, customer data, and teams that work remotely, an incident response exercise is a safe way to test their readiness in advance of a real attack. The exercises give the teams a chance to practice scenarios, address any confusion, and enhance their response plans.
This guide explains how incident response exercises help Austin businesses prepare for cyberattacks, reduce chaos, and improve recovery.
What Is an Incident Response Exercise?
An incident response exercise is a process of simulating an event in which a company goes through a mock incident. The purpose of this is not to lay blame or to challenge people under threat. The idea is to gain insight into what the business will do if this actually happens.
An incident tabletop exercise is a facilitated workshop that tests the incident response plan, decision-making, and communication, to minimize the improvisation an organization has to do during an incident. Their tabletop exercise approach includes realistic scenarios, clarification of roles, an escalation path, communication steps, and a prioritized action plan following the tabletop exercise.
These exercises are particularly advantageous as many organizations have an incident response plan on paper, but have not been conducted with real stakeholders. A plan can be sound until the team discovers they are not up to date on who the contacts are, who has access to approve system shutdowns, or who is unclear about notifying the customer.
Why Austin Businesses Should Practice Before a Cyber Crisis
Austin businesses are competitive in this rapidly changing world. Local businesses rely on SaaS applications, online payment systems, digital files and records, vendors, cloud storage and remote access. These systems make work a bit easier, but they also provide additional opportunities for a cyber incident to impact the work.
NIST offers guidance to help organizations craft policies and plans for incident response, procedures to follow and report incidents, communication guidelines, team structure, and establish relations with internal groups (including legal departments) and external groups, including law enforcement. (NIST Publications)
But if these steps are not practiced, they remain only theoretical. These need to be worked on. In the event of a real cyber incident, teams may be under time pressure, lack full information, and be impacted by the demands of customers, executives, vendors, insurers, or regulators. A tabletop exercise provides the business with a suitable test bed to evaluate those decisions before a real test.
This is significant for Austin businesses, as it can minimize downtime, bolster customer confidence, meet legal and insurance obligations, and inform leadership in making sound business decisions.
What Makes Tabletop Exercises Different?
An Incident Response Tabletop Exercise is NOT a technical penetration test! It’s also not a mere training presentation. It’s an exercise that involves a business and technical scenario for stakeholders to work through together, based on a real incident.
According to ISACA, tabletop exercises are “discussion-based activities in which the participants gather for a discussion about the roles and responses to a specific emergency. The facilitator presents a scenario and poses questions that elicit thoughts about roles, responsibilities, coordination, and decision-making.
Tabletop exercises are valuable to business leaders – not just IT – for this reason. It’s not just a technical problem when it comes to ransomware attacks, data breaches, vendor compromises, or fraudulent invoice incidents. It could involve legal, financial, customer, public, regulatory, and/or executive risks and losses.
The tabletop exercise is not one that just tests the IT team’s response; it tests the entire business.
Common Scenarios for Austin Businesses
The most effective incident response scenario exercises are realistic and tailored to the company’s size, industry, systems, and risks. Less useful are generic scenarios, as these don’t test the real decisions that the company may make.
Austin businesses can ride the wave of exercises based on such scenarios as:
Ransomware Attack
Employees are unable to access files. Files suddenly become inaccessible to employees. Appearance of ransom note. Backups may be unavailable or inaccessible. The team needs to determine whether to take steps to isolate systems, call for external help, seek legal advice, alert management, and start the recovery process.
Business Email Compromise
A vendor or partner states they have paid an invoice, but it was not issued by the legitimate vendor. The e-mail message seemed to be from the company. The team needs to determine whether any accounts have been hacked, whether any customers or partners have been impacted, and who is communicating with the vendor.
Cloud Account Compromise
Admin account has unusual activity. Information could have been accessed or shared outside of the system. The business will have to make decisions on how to contain the account, check logs, retain evidence, and determine the impact on the customer.
Vendor Security Incident
A critical SaaS provider or SaaS service partner notifies of a breach. The company will have to decide which information might be affected, whether there will be any disruption to operations, and whether the customer and/or regulators should be notified.
Lost Device or Insider Risk
A company laptop is lost, or an employee downloads an excessive amount of data before leaving the company. The team needs to assess exposure, identify who has access to the data and who will be involved in HR, and determine what steps they will take.
These scenarios help Austin companies put real decisions to the test before they are called upon to make them during a real incident.
Who Should Be Involved in an Incident Response Exercise?
One mistake often made is treating incident response as an IT issue. While it’s crucial to have technical teams, sometimes, it’s all about the business choices when it comes to cyber incidents.
A typical tabletop exercise involves leadership, IT, security, legal, HR, and communications teams because anyone who has a say in determining the outcomes of an incident should be involved.
The perfect people for many Austin businesses could be:
- Either the CEO/COO or senior leaders.
- IT or security lead
- Legal counsel or compliance representative.
- HR representative
- Finance leader
- The head of Communications and Marketing.
- Customer success or account management lead.
- Operations manager
- Vendor management or procurement contact.
- A cybersecurity expert who provides advisory services and/or acts as a virtual CISO.
The idea is to ensure those who will be making sound decisions are around during the practice session.
What an Incident Response Exercise Should Test
A good incident response exercise should evaluate whether the company’s written response plan works under pressure. Key discussion topics should include:
- How and when is an incident formally declared?
- Who will be in charge of the response?
- How is the incident escalated and managed?
- Who is involved in the process of outside experts?
- How is evidence preserved, collected and analyzed?
- When should legal counsel be involved?
- Whether and when should cyber insurance be notified?
- How are systems isolated when impacted by a disaster?
- Who is responsible for approving any communication to customers?
- Whether vendors and/or partners need to be contacted?
- Who can provide leadership with updates, and how are these updates given?
- Recovery procedures and business restoration steps?
- How are lessons learned recorded?
Tabletop exercises, as described by ISACA, are used to gain a better understanding of roles, response priorities, the order of events, communication needs, and available tools. The process also helps to validate processes and ensure the plan is complete.
That’s why it’s common for tabletop exercises to uncover problems that aren’t picked up by routine policy reviews.
Technical vs. Executive Tabletop Exercises
There’s a variety of practice needed for different groups. A “technical” exercise should NOT be the same as an executive game.
Technical Incident Response Exercise
A technical tabletop exercise involves IT, security, and operations. Questions that it asks include:
- Where are the logs?
- Who reviews alerts?
- Are suspicious accounts disabled easily and quickly?
- Are backups available?
- Do systems exist that can be isolated?
- Who does the caller reach out to the cloud vendor or MSP?
- What do you need to keep as evidence?
Asher Security’s incident response planning guidance covers the benefits of technical exercises, including validating visibility, alerting, log gathering, and technical response processes.
Executive Incident Response Exercises
Typical executive-level questions include:
- Who will be responsible for the closing of systems?
- Who is using a different voice with the customers?
- When is it OK to involve legal counsel?
- What steps are taken to manage reputational risk?
- What do you think the board should be informed about?
- Who is authorized to post public messages?
- What and how are the costs tracked?
It is important for this type of exercise, since executives may need to make significant decisions before the technical investigation is completed.
What to do after the exercise?
But the most useful aspect of an incident response exercise is the post-discussion. While facilitating an activity, a good facilitator should note what went well, what was confusing, and ways to improve it.
ISACA suggests that an after-action report include the following information: Date and time of the exercise, Participants, Exercise scenario descriptions, Findings, Observations, Recommendations, Lessons learned, and Strengths and weaknesses.
The final product should be useful to Austin businesses. It may include:
- A new incident response plan is in place.
- Clarified and streamlined responsibilities and duties
- Better escalation process
- Updated contact list
- Enhance backup and recovery procedures.
- New process for communicating with new customers.
- Vendor notification checklist
- Escalation points – legal & insurance.
- A number of security and logging enhancements.
- Prioritized action plan
It’s not just about doing the exercise. The aim is to boost readiness in the event of the next true event.
How often should you conduct Incident Response exercises?
Most organizations should conduct an incident response exercise at least once per year. One is also recommended to be run after large changes, such as new policies, leadership changes, or new security systems.
When thinking about an exercise, Austin businesses should also consider when:
- The business begins to use key new cloud-based solutions.
- A new management team is being put in place.
- The business gets ready for SOC 2 and/or cyber insurance.
- A vendor incident has a detrimental impact on the operations.
- A phishing/Account Compromise event takes place.
- The company pursues a growth strategy in new markets.
- Customer security requirements increase.
Regular exercises help keep incident response plans aligned with business changes.
Why Choose Asher Security for Incident Response Exercises in Austin?
Austin businesses can benefit from cybersecurity consulting services offered by Asher Security, including tabletop exercises that simulate real-life scenarios and challenges to help address security needs. An incident tabletop exercise is an event where the teams can test the scenario prior to a real incident and get a feel for what to do and what not to do during an incident, according to their Austin page.
Austin businesses can benefit from Asher Security’s services when it comes to:
- Realistic cyber scenarios of incidents
- Executive and technical tabletop exercises (ETTXs)
- Review of an Incident Response plan.
- Role clarification and escalation planning
- Communication planning
- Vendor incident discussions
- Ransomware and breach simulations
- After-action reports
- Prioritized improvement plans
In the digital age, a virtual CISO supports response planning.
This allows Austin companies to look for an organization that offers more than just an ordinary training session, such as Asher Security. They have a process based on business impact, decision-making, communication, and action improvement.
Conclusion
Incident response exercises in Austin, TX enable companies to be ready when it counts most – when speed, clarity and coordination are critical. A cyberattack can put pressure on IT, leadership, legal, finance, HR, communications, vendors, and customers. Teams can waste time deciding on what to do next without practice.
A tabletop exercise provides a safe environment for the business to make decisions, identify gaps, enhance communication and reinforce the Incident Response Plan. For Austin startups, SaaS companies, financial institutions, health organizations, and professional service companies, these exercises can reduce confusion and make recovery smoother.
When your Austin company wants to be ready in case of an actual cyber event, take advantage of Austin cyber security consulting services from Asher Security and set up a Cyber Risk Call.
FAQs
What steps do you take to run an incident response tabletop exercise?
A facilitator shares a realistic cyber situation, and the team discusses the actions, decisions, responsibilities, and communications needed, as well as the recovery plans.
Who is responsible for being involved in an incident response exercise?
If any of these teams are likely to be involved in a real incident, they should be included, such as IT, security, leadership, legal, HR, finance, communications, operations and customer-facing teams.
How many times should incident response exercises be conducted?
Ideally, a business should conduct an incident response exercise at least once a year, or if a change is made in the systems, the leadership, the vendor or the security policies.
What are some incident response scenarios?
Ransomware, Business email compromise, Phishing, Cloud account takeover, Vendor breach, Lost device, Insider threat and Data exposure are typical incident types.
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