Security Operation Center (SOC) Experts
22.09.2021
22.09.2021
Unsurprisingly, you may think after reading the word “tabletop” that this exercise is likely to involve physical activity while your staff members sit across a table in a business meeting room. However, contrary to popular belief, conducting a remote cyber tabletop exercise for your organization is the same, if not, more effective than conducting a physical tabletop exercise. And in this article, we will share why!
What is a cyber tabletop exercise?
Businesses throughout the globe conduct cyber tabletop exercises to develop, evaluate, and test their incident response and disaster recovery plans to prepare for actual events of natural and cyber disasters. By conducting such cybersecurity tabletop exercises, businesses evaluate how well all the internal teams and key stakeholders will perform their required responsibilities in an event of an emergency to ensure business continuity and effective remediation of the threats and their impact. Tabletop exercises enable business ventures to stay current with the emerging cybersecurity threats while leveraging their internal expertise to develop effective cybersecurity strategies and security policies to improve the overall cybersecurity posture of the business.
There is no arguing when it comes to the importance of cybersecurity tabletop exercises for businesses. However, is it really effective to host a remote cyber tabletop exercise? In a single word. Yes! It can be highly effective and beneficial for your business to run a tabletop exercise remotely via Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet. As we are living in a new normal of increased remote connectivity the timing couldn’t be more right for you to experiment by conducting a remote cybersecurity tabletop exercise. To help you get started, here are the top four reasons why you should conduct remote tabletop exercises for your business.
Conducting tabletop exercises physically has its own benefits, however, this traditional way of conducting tabletop exercises is not effective and even applicable today. As the world struggles to cope with the current situation of pandemics and increased distances, it is unrealistic to think it is safe to conduct physical exercises in a workplace, over a table. Today, businesses are increasingly adopting remote working business models and it is extremely unlikely that your CEO, CISO, and COO will be present in the workplace premises in case of a cyberattack or incident. In such a case of an emergency, chances are, you will have to reach out to your key team members and executives remotely to communicate the updates and devise a remediation strategy. Therefore, while it is clear that considering the current real-life scenario, the state of pandemic and remote working, it is not possible for your key executives to be present on company premises in case of a cybersecurity disaster, so why not conduct remote tabletop exercises and prepare virtual cyber disaster response already?
The heading says it all. Conducting remote tabletop exercises to increase organizational security is now more important than ever. As more and more businesses go virtual, the risks of cyberattacks continue to increase. Experts report a whopping 600% increase in cybercrime due to the pandemic. To tackle the increased rate of cybersecurity threats and fulfill the digitalization requirements, it has become a necessity for business ventures to conduct virtual tabletop exercises to address the current security issues and prepare effective remote working security policies to increase digital security and ensure business sustainability and continuity. Conducting remote cybersecurity tabletop exercises can allow you to develop effective remote cyber incident response plans to effectively prepare against remote security risks.
Conducting remote tabletop exercises allows you to connect with everyone from anywhere. Not only this helps in removing physical boundaries, but it also allows you to keep your employees abreast with all the business updates and prepared for emergencies. Conducting regular virtual disaster recovery tabletop exercises bridges the communication gaps, improves relations, increases connectivity, and assures availability and contribution of the required staff in case of a security incident.
The traditional way of conducting tabletop exercises physically requires you to gather your key executives in one room, and for many businesses that can mean summoning the key executives from different geographical locations, paying for their plane tickets, arranging hotel accommodations, paying for their meals, cab fairs, and so on. In addition to the current rapidly tightening international traveling restrictions, it is also not suitable and safe for your business to gather your staff in a room - considering the current situation of the pandemic. Further, you can save a lot of costs by simply switching to remote tabletop exercises.
