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As cybersecurity threats continue to evolve, tabletop exercises are becoming increasingly crucial for organizations to ensure preparedness and resilience in the face of AI-powered threats. This article explores the changing nature of these exercises and provides guidance on how organizations can adapt their tabletop exercises to reflect the speed and volume of modern cyber threats.
Cybersecurity tabletop exercises are crucial for organizations to prepare for evolving threats and ensure resilience. The exercises must simulate AI-powered attacks, rapid response, and containment to test an organization's preparedness. AI-powered attacks exploit vulnerabilities at a higher rate, making it essential for organizations to incorporate this into their tabletop exercises. Exercises should reflect the realities of attackers using AI to move faster, quieter, and more efficiently. The goal is to rehearse faster decisions, verify information in low-trust environments, and prepare teams for scenarios targeting AI systems. Education is key in these exercises, with senior leadership teams learning about threats and potential risks associated with them. Organizations should use AI to develop scenarios, measure outcomes, and expose information about their environment to improve the effectiveness of tabletop exercises.
As the threat landscape continues to evolve, cybersecurity tabletop exercises are becoming increasingly crucial for organizations to ensure preparedness and resilience in the face of emerging threats. This year, the nature of these exercises has changed significantly, with a growing emphasis on simulating AI-powered attacks and adapting to the speed and volume of modern cyber threats.
According to Wendi Whitmore, Chief Security Intelligence Officer at Palo Alto Networks, tabletop exercises are no longer just about testing response times but also about understanding how quickly an organization can respond to and contain a threat. "We're ultimately testing how resilient is the organization," she said in an interview with The Register. "It's not if we get attacked, it's: How quickly do we respond and contain these attacks."
The threat landscape has changed significantly, with AI-powered attacks becoming more prevalent and sophisticated. Google Cloud's Office of the CISO Public Sector Advisor Enrique Alvarez noted that threat actors are exploiting CVEs at an increased rate using AI, making it essential for organizations to incorporate this into their tabletop exercises.
Tabletop exercises must now reflect two realities: attackers using AI to move faster, quieter, and at massive scale, and attackers targeting the AI systems we deploy. Tanmay Ganacharya, VP of Microsoft threat protection research, emphasized the importance of simulating adaptive, AI-powered phishing and rapid moving attack chains in these exercises.
"The best exercises simulate adaptive, AI-powered phishing and rapid moving attack chains, while also preparing teams for scenarios targeting AI systems like prompt injection, misconfiguration, and AI-driven data exfiltration," Ganacharya said. "The goal is to rehearse faster decisions, verify information in low trust environments, and ensure teams understand how AI changes every stage of the kill chain."
Mark Lance, GuidePoint security VP of digital forensics and incident response and threat intel, highlighted the importance of education in these exercises. "So for instance, a senior leadership team learning about ransomware typically walks away from it saying, 'I know more about this and the potential risks and threats associated with it.'"
As organizations prepare to face AI-powered attacks, they must also consider using AI to develop scenarios and measure outcomes. Bill Reid, a security advisor to healthcare and life sciences organizations in Google Cloud's Office of the CISO, suggested making an AI fake and using it in tabletop exercises.
"Want to test AI fakes? Make one and use it in the tabletop exercise," he told The Register. "Exercises must practice reverting to minimum viable business operations, utilizing offline golden copies of data and robust approval processes that an algorithm cannot spoof."
Taylor Lehman, director of Google Cloud Office of the CISO's healthcare and life sciences division, emphasized the importance of using AI to expose information about the environment, including threats, controls, vulnerabilities, assets, key risks, stakeholders, and customer personas.
"Expose information about your environment - like threats, controls, vulnerabilities, assets of all types, key risks, stakeholders, customer personas, etc. - to AI systems who can then help craft very meaningful and very specific, realistic scenarios that will help you hone the scenario and deliver specific types of outcomes you want as part of an exercise," Lehman said.
As the threat landscape continues to evolve, it is essential for organizations to adapt their tabletop exercises to reflect the changing nature of cyber threats. By incorporating AI-powered attacks into these exercises, organizations can ensure they are prepared to respond effectively in the face of emerging threats.
Related Information:
https://www.ethicalhackingnews.com/articles/The-Evolution-of-Cybersecurity-Tabletop-Exercises-Adapting-to-AI-Powered-Threats-ehn.shtml
Published: Fri Dec 26 16:57:47 2025 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
