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Tabletop Exercise

SOC 2ISO 27001HIPAAPCI DSS

Discussion-based simulation walking through a hypothetical incident scenario with the response team.

A tabletop exercise is a discussion-based session in which the incident-response team walks through a hypothetical scenario (ransomware, breach, outage) and exercises the IR plan in a low-fidelity setting. Outputs include identified gaps and improvement actions.

Why it matters
Most frameworks require at least annual exercise. Tabletop is the cheapest way to evidence ‘tested’ IR/BC/DR plans.

Related terms

Incident Response (IR)
Documented, tested process for detecting, containing, eradicating, and recovering from security incidents.
Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery (BC/DR)
Tested plans to maintain or restore operations after disruptive events; measured by RTO/RPO.

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