A Cyber Security Tabletop Exercises (TTXs) is a highly interactive and engaging activity, that is designed to test your organisation’s incident response plan, capabilities and processes. A TTX provides a safe and controlled environment for the organisation to practise it’s incident detection, containment and response strategies, and identify areas of weakness that need to be addressed.
Cyber Security Tabletop Exercises (TTXs) are essentially simulations of potential incidents (in this case, cyber incidents) that could impact an organisation, and the generally form part of the organisation’s incident response plan and process because they allow organisations to proactively prepare for incidents rather than reactively responding to them.
The TTX is a highly interactive and engaging activity, designed to promote collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills among your team members, and each TTX will provide your business with a number of benefits:
In summary, the TTX will benefit your business by providing valuable insights into your team’s readiness and ability to respond to actual cyber threats. This approach not only helps identify potential weaknesses in your cyber security posture but also provides an opportunity for your team to learn and improve their skills in a risk-free environment.
A TTX will generally be implemented in three main phases: pre-exercise, exercise, and post-exercise.
Each of these phases is described in more detail below:
The pre-exercise phase focuses on planning, coordination, and scenario development.
We work closely with key stakeholders to design a realistic cybersecurity scenario that reflects the organisation’s threat profile, business context, and existing controls.
This stage identifies the participants who will take part—typically representatives from IT, security, operations, legal, communications, and executive leadership. We also confirm objectives, success criteria, timing, and any artefacts required during the exercise.
The outcome is a tailored TTX plan that ensures relevance, clear expectations, and strong engagement from all involved.
The exercise phase is the core of the TTX.
Participants are guided through an agreed scenario structured into time-limited scenes or acts, each presenting new information, constraints, or incident developments.
Teams discuss options, make decisions, and provide evidence of preparedness, such as policies, logs, procedures, or defined roles. dotSec typically runs two separate exercises, one for executives and one for technical teams, allowing each group to focus on decisions and processes appropriate to them.
This format mirrors real-world incident response, ensuring the exercise is relevant, practical, and reflective of actual organisational behaviour.
The post-exercise phase analyses performance across both the executive and technical sessions to determine strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement.
We compile insights into a clear, actionable report that outlines what worked well, where processes broke down, and what changes would materially strengthen your organisation’s incident readiness.
Recommendations may include updates to documentation, role clarity, communication pathways, detection capabilities, or escalation processes.
This phase ensures the TTX results in tangible, measurable improvements rather than being a one-off learning activity.
The follow-up phase ensures the benefits of the TTX translate into measurable, lasting improvements.
After delivering the post-exercise report, dotSec works with your team to clarify recommended actions, prioritise remediation tasks, and support any required updates to policies, procedures, communication pathways, or incident response artefacts.
This phase may include short targeted workshops, validation activities, or checks to confirm that improvements have been implemented effectively.
Follow-up ensures the TTX is not a one-off activity but a driver of sustained uplift in organisational readiness and cross-team coordination.
DotSec’s Table-Top Exercises stand apart because they are designed and delivered by consultants who actively build, maintain, and audit real-world security systems. This ensures every scenario, decision point, and recommendation is grounded in operational reality rather than theory. Our exercises consistently deliver insights that organisations can implement immediately, because they reflect how incidents unfold in environments that must meet demanding standards such as ISO 27001 and PCI DSS.
By participating in our Cyber Security TTX, your organisation will not only enhance its resilience to cyber threats but also foster a culture of cyber awareness and preparedness among your team members. We believe this proactive approach is key to mitigating the risk of cyber incidents and ensuring the ongoing security and integrity of your systems and services.
Give us a call and let’s talk TTX!
