When cyber incidents occur on an OT asset, the consequences can be dire – disrupted production, compromised worker safety, and/or significant financial damage. Recent malware attacks have forced manufacturers and utility companies to halt operations, costing millions in lost revenue. To avoid this scenario and protect operations, you must be able to quickly detect, respond to, and recover from cyber incidents.

One of the best methods to improve preparedness, communication, and decision-making for teams that protect against cyber threats is to perform cybersecurity tabletop exercises. These structured discussion-based simulations allow your teams to test their response plan, identify vulnerabilities, and refine incident-handling strategies—all before an actual attack occurs.

In this blog, we’ll explore the importance of tabletop cybersecurity exercises for OT environments, how to run effective tabletop exercises, and how tabletop exercises can help you be more prepared to face today’s ever-evolving cyber threats.

The Importance of Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercises

Since many industrial environments rely on OT systems to control nearly every aspect of the facility, a cyberattack on these systems presents a variety of business risks. By using tabletop exercises to simulate potential cybersecurity breaches, you can reduce these risks by uncovering vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them. These exercises provide critical insights and a variety of benefits including: 

• Enhancing incident response readiness – By exposing possible vulnerabilities in your organization’s cybersecurity strategy and taking the time to assess the potential risks posed by cyber threats, you can proactively refine incident response plans.
• Improving coordination between stakeholders – Communication gaps between key security response team stakeholders, such as IT and OT, can be identified in advance to ensure smooth collaboration in the event of an incident.
• Fostering better decision making under pressure – Cyber incidents typically require quick, but well-informed, decisions be made under stressful conditions. These exercises help all stakeholders, from plant managers to engineers to executives, practice making critical choices ranging from when to isolate an infected system to when a total shutdown is necessary.
• Providing training, education, and documented findings – Through this hands-on training and the documented records of the discussions, decisions, and actions taken during the simulation, targeted improvement plans can be developed. As more exercises are conducted over time, these reports make it easy to demonstrate progress being made.
• Validating incident response plans for compliance and completeness – These exercises are also a good way to ensure your organization’s incident responses comply with any applicable industry regulations and consider all the different dependencies required for critical operations. 

A Quick Guide to Getting Started with an OT Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercise

Prior to engaging in a cybersecurity tabletop exercise, you must first assemble a comprehensive team that includes all parties who need to respond to real-world OT cybersecurity incidents. This may include personnel from OT, IT, operations, maintenance, legal, and compliance as well as members of your leadership team and even third-party vendors. 

This cross-functional team should then define the scope and objectives of the exercise by considering what scenarios are realistic and relevant to the facility’s specific OT environment. For example, will the focus of the exercise be on detecting and mitigating a ransomware attack targeting HMIs or responding to unauthorized remote access to a SCADA system?

From here, the designated internal facilitator or third-party cybersecurity expert responsible for running the exercise should lead all parts of the exercise by performing the following tasks:

• Developing the scenario – Create a realistic simulation of a cyberattack scenario for your OT environment.
• Facilitating the exercise – Guide the team through the scenario while prompting realistic discussions on topics such as containment strategies, communication protocols, and operational decision-making. The facilitator should also ask the team to think about what they might see/feel/hear during an actual incident.
• Debriefing and discussing an improvement plan – Evaluate the team’s response, identify gaps, and determine improvements to refine your response strategies as needed.
  

When deciding who should facilitate your tabletop exercise, keep in mind that this person should be responsible for the entire process outlined above. While you may have a cybersecurity team lead in-house, it is important to consider if they have enough time to take on this task in addition to their everyday workload. You should also consider whether there are any additional benefits to your organization to bringing in a third-party expert to manage this process. This could include having access to an outside, objective perspective or additional insight into cybersecurity best practices and threat intelligence that your organization may not already be familiar with. 

Why Tabletop Exercises Need to Be Part of Your Cybersecurity Program

Regardless of whether you work in an industry that requires you to conduct tabletop exercises, there are many benefits to making these exercises a regular part of your cybersecurity program. By walking through real-world cybersecurity breach scenarios, you can improve coordination between your IT and OT teams, clarify cyber incident team roles and responsibilities, and strengthen your overall cyber resilience – all without an actual event occurring. The resulting well-prepared response plan can mean the difference between a minor disruption and a costly shutdown.

Whether you're looking to improve compliance, enhance resilience, or protect production uptime, an ACE cybersecurity expert can help you design and execute effective tabletop exercises. Contact an ACE cybersecurity expert today to get started.