The time to find out how your team responds is before the incident
Facilitated tabletop exercises by practitioners who run incident response for a living — grounded in the scenarios your industry actually faces.
A tabletop exercise is a test of your people, your process, and your communication — not your technology. When an incident happens, the tools don't lead the response. People do. Decision makers who may never have walked through what a ransomware event looks like at 11 p.m. on a Friday. Legal and communications teams who've never had to coordinate with a security team in real time. Executives who've never had to consider whether to pay a ransom or notify regulators.
We facilitate exercises that surface those gaps — safely, before they matter.
Facilitated tabletop exercises by practitioners who run incident response for a living — grounded in the scenarios your industry actually faces.
A tabletop exercise is a test of your people, your process, and your communication — not your technology. When an incident happens, the tools don't lead the response. People do. Decision makers who may never have walked through what a ransomware event looks like at 11 p.m. on a Friday. Legal and communications teams who've never had to coordinate with a security team in real time. Executives who've never had to consider whether to pay a ransom or notify regulators.
We facilitate exercises that surface those gaps — safely, before they matter.
Why Tabletops Fail and How We Do It Differently
01
Why tabletop exercises fall short
Most tabletop exercises fail because they stay too generic. The scenario is broad, the facilitation is scripted, and the discussion stays comfortable. Everyone agrees on the “right” answers, but no one tests whether those answers work under real pressure.
02
Where the real value comes from
The value of a tabletop is not the scenario itself. It is the conversation that starts when the exercise becomes specific: who owns the decision, what the response plan missed, which dependencies break, and how legal, security, and leadership act when timelines are tight.
03
How we make exercises useful
We design exercises that create those conversations on purpose — because that is where teams find gaps, build alignment, and get better.
02
Where the real value comes from
The value of a tabletop is not the scenario itself. It is the conversation that starts when the exercise becomes specific: who owns the decision, what the response plan missed, which dependencies break, and how legal, security, and leadership act when timelines are tight.
03
How we make exercises useful
We design exercises that create those conversations on purpose — because that is where teams find gaps, build alignment, and get better.
01
Why tabletop exercises fall short
Most tabletop exercises fail because they stay too generic. The scenario is broad, the facilitation is scripted, and the discussion stays comfortable. Everyone agrees on the “right” answers, but no one tests whether those answers work under real pressure.
What We Bring to the Room
Practitioner-led facilitation
Our facilitators aren't career consultants who specialize in running exercises. They're security engineers and analysts who run managed SOC engagements, respond to real incidents, and understand how attacks actually unfold — not just how they're described in after-action reports. That operational context changes what gets asked in the room.
Scenarios built from current intelligence
We don't pull from a library of generic scenarios. We build from current threat intelligence relevant to your industry, your threat profile, and — where applicable — your specific environment. The scenario your team walks through reflects how adversaries are actually operating against organizations like yours right now.
Always U.S.-based
Every facilitator is U.S.-based. For organizations with sensitive operations, government workloads, or strict data handling requirements, the conversation in a tabletop can surface sensitive internal context. We handle that with the same discretion we bring to managed SOC engagements.
Connected to your real security posture
For organizations that are also Hurricane Labs managed SOC or pen test clients, we can design exercises that directly reference your actual detection coverage, your SIEM environment, and the gaps we've identified in previous work. The scenario isn't hypothetical — it's grounded in what we know about your real exposure.
Exercise Formats
Ransomware and Extortion Response
The most common scenario for a reason — and the one where communication and decision-making failures are most costly. We walk your team through initial detection, containment decisions, ransom decision frameworks, regulatory notification timelines, and public communications sequencing. Designed to surface gaps in who owns each decision and whether your playbooks hold up under time pressure.
The most common scenario for a reason — and the one where communication and decision-making failures are most costly. We walk your team through initial detection, containment decisions, ransom decision frameworks, regulatory notification timelines, and public communications sequencing. Designed to surface gaps in who owns each decision and whether your playbooks hold up under time pressure.
Data Breach and Regulatory Notification
Breach notification timelines are unforgiving. HIPAA's 60-day window, GDPR's 72-hour requirement, SEC disclosure rules, state-level notification statutes — your team needs to know who decides, who notifies, and when. This exercise pressure-tests those decisions with legal, compliance, communications, and security leadership in the room together.
Breach notification timelines are unforgiving. HIPAA's 60-day window, GDPR's 72-hour requirement, SEC disclosure rules, state-level notification statutes — your team needs to know who decides, who notifies, and when. This exercise pressure-tests those decisions with legal, compliance, communications, and security leadership in the room together.
Insider Threat
A compromised or malicious insider is one of the hardest incidents to handle — because it involves HR, legal, and executive leadership in ways that external incidents don't. We design scenarios that surface the procedural and jurisdictional complexity of insider threat response before it's real.
A compromised or malicious insider is one of the hardest incidents to handle — because it involves HR, legal, and executive leadership in ways that external incidents don't. We design scenarios that surface the procedural and jurisdictional complexity of insider threat response before it's real.
Supply Chain Compromise
Third-party software, vendor access, and supply chain intrusion are among the fastest-growing attack vectors. This scenario walks your team through the discovery, scoping, and communication challenges specific to a compromise that originates outside your perimeter.
Third-party software, vendor access, and supply chain intrusion are among the fastest-growing attack vectors. This scenario walks your team through the discovery, scoping, and communication challenges specific to a compromise that originates outside your perimeter.
Cloud and Hybrid Environment Incidents
Cloud-native incidents create response challenges that on-premises playbooks weren't built for — shared responsibility model ambiguity, cloud provider coordination, data residency complexity. This exercise is designed for organizations whose environments span on-premises and cloud infrastructure.
Cloud-native incidents create response challenges that on-premises playbooks weren't built for — shared responsibility model ambiguity, cloud provider coordination, data residency complexity. This exercise is designed for organizations whose environments span on-premises and cloud infrastructure.
Custom Scenarios
Based on current intelligence for your sector, the findings from a recent pen test or threat hunting engagement, your specific regulatory exposure, or a scenario your leadership team has identified as a priority concern. We build to your brief.
Based on current intelligence for your sector, the findings from a recent pen test or threat hunting engagement, your specific regulatory exposure, or a scenario your leadership team has identified as a priority concern. We build to your brief.
Who Should Be in the Room
A tabletop is most valuable when it brings together everyone who would actually have a role in an incident — not just the security team.
A tabletop is most valuable when it brings together everyone who would actually have a role in an incident — not just the security team.
We help you identify the right participants for each exercise format and scope the scenario to produce the most productive conversation given who's in the room.
We help you identify the right participants for each exercise format and scope the scenario to produce the most productive conversation given who's in the room.
Security leadership (CISO, SOC Director/Manager)
Decision authority, technical context, detection and response coordination.
Decision authority, technical context, detection and response coordination.
IT and engineering leadership
Infrastructure decisions, system isolation authority, recovery planning.
Infrastructure decisions, system isolation authority, recovery planning.
Legal and compliance
Regulatory notification authority, privilege considerations, breach counsel coordination.
Regulatory notification authority, privilege considerations, breach counsel coordination.
Communications and PR
External messaging, customer notification, media coordination.
External messaging, customer notification, media coordination.
Executive leadership (CEO, CFO, COO)
Ransom decisions, business continuity decisions, board communication.
Ransom decisions, business continuity decisions, board communication.
HR (for insider threat scenarios)
Employee investigation authority, HR policy coordination.
Employee investigation authority, HR policy coordination.
Every ticket tells the full story
Most SOC vendors send you an alert and leave you to figure out the rest. We send you a narrative. Every Hurricane Labs SOC ticket includes:
Most SOC vendors send you an alert and leave you to figure out the rest. We send you a narrative. Every Hurricane Labs SOC ticket includes:
A structured after-action report
Documentation of the exercise scenario, the decisions and discussion it produced, and the specific gaps, disagreements, and action items that surfaced. Written to be useful to your security team and defensible to auditors and insurers.
A structured after-action report
Documentation of the exercise scenario, the decisions and discussion it produced, and the specific gaps, disagreements, and action items that surfaced. Written to be useful to your security team and defensible to auditors and insurers.
Identified gaps in your incident response plan
Not theoretical recommendations. Specific places where your current plan doesn't account for something the exercise revealed — an unclear decision owner, a missing escalation path, a notification timeline your team hadn't worked through.
Identified gaps in your incident response plan
Not theoretical recommendations. Specific places where your current plan doesn't account for something the exercise revealed — an unclear decision owner, a missing escalation path, a notification timeline your team hadn't worked through.
Prioritized action items
A concrete list of what to fix, in what order, with enough context that the right people can own each item.
Prioritized action items
A concrete list of what to fix, in what order, with enough context that the right people can own each item.
Executive debrief
A facilitated debrief session that walks leadership through what the exercise revealed, what it means for the organization's risk posture, and what the remediation roadmap looks like.
Executive debrief
A facilitated debrief session that walks leadership through what the exercise revealed, what it means for the organization's risk posture, and what the remediation roadmap looks like.
Cyber insurance and compliance evidence
A documented tabletop with a professional after-action report supports cyber insurance applications, renewals, and claims — and satisfies the incident response planning requirements in HIPAA, PCI, SOX, CMMC, and other frameworks your auditors care about.
Cyber insurance and compliance evidence
A documented tabletop with a professional after-action report supports cyber insurance applications, renewals, and claims — and satisfies the incident response planning requirements in HIPAA, PCI, SOX, CMMC, and other frameworks your auditors care about.
Built for Regulated Environments
The compliance value of a tabletop depends entirely on how it's designed and documented. A facilitated exercise with a professional after-action report is substantively different from an internal whiteboard session — to your auditors, your insurers, and the regulators you'd be facing if an incident actually occurred.
The compliance value of a tabletop depends entirely on how it's designed and documented. A facilitated exercise with a professional after-action report is substantively different from an internal whiteboard session — to your auditors, your insurers, and the regulators you'd be facing if an incident actually occurred.
We design exercises to generate evidence that holds up in those contexts. Healthcare organizations get scenarios and documentation built around HIPAA breach notification requirements. Financial services clients get exercises that address SEC disclosure rules and exam-ready documentation. Public sector organizations get scenarios appropriate to their specific regulatory and operational context.
We design exercises to generate evidence that holds up in those contexts. Healthcare organizations get scenarios and documentation built around HIPAA breach notification requirements. Financial services clients get exercises that address SEC disclosure rules and exam-ready documentation. Public sector organizations get scenarios appropriate to their specific regulatory and operational context.
Related Services
Penetration Testing
Simulate an active attack to validate what hunting surfaces.
Penetration Testing
Simulate an active attack to validate what hunting surfaces.
Threat Hunting & Intelligence
Make sure the scenarios we test in the room reflect what your adversaries are actually doing.
Threat Hunting & Intelligence
Make sure the scenarios we test in the room reflect what your adversaries are actually doing.
Threat Hunting & Intelligence
Make sure the scenarios we test in the room reflect what your adversaries are actually doing.
Veeries MDR
24/7 coverage that executes the response your tabletop trained for.
Veeries MDR
24/7 coverage that executes the response your tabletop trained for.