Attainium Insights, short, practical observations and examples drawn from real-world tabletop exercises and business continuity planning.
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Plans only work if they’re current—and tested. Use this checklist to review what matters most: governance and scope, risks and impacts, roles and alternates, communications, operations/IT, facilities and vendors, data/backup integrity, strategies (Plan A/B/C), and testing/improvement. Start where the risk is highest, then schedule a quick tabletop to validate decisions and assumptions. (Updated 2025)
If the months of January and February are any indication of what the rest of winter will look like, we may suffer many interruptions in power and internet access. In the first part of the month, many areas in Virginia, for example, suffered outages that lasted anywhere from seven hours to five days. As I write this, most of the northeast has just suffered from the impact of blizzard conditions, with power outages and flooding. In the next several days, another large storm is expected to hit the Midwest and New England.
Proactive education and training are essential to maintaining business continuity and preparing for unexpected events. However, even if an organization has a documented business continuity plan, some employees might not know what's in it, or the strategy might never have been tested. Tabletop Exercises from Attainium can help companies gain the knowledge they need to recover and respond to a variety of situations.
Cyberattacks (including ransomware attacks) have been on the rise for the past several years, causing loss of productivity, damage to reputation, and, of course, impact on the bottom line. More than 50% of businesses surveyed in the Sophos Annual Ransomware Survey in 2020 suffered a significant ransomware attack. Globally, ransomware attacks will cost nearly $20 billion in 2021 alone.
Strong business continuity plans only work when they’re tested. Tabletop exercises help teams validate decision-making, communication paths, and real-world recovery strategies before an actual disruption. These six proven scenarios are ideal for strengthening resilience, practicing response under pressure, and identifying gaps that need improvement.
It's time to look around and see what else we should be doing virtually -- for example, training, testing, and exercising your business continuity plan. More than likely, this plan hasn't been exercised for months (at least), and we all know that an untested plan can't be relied on in a crisis. With people still working at home, it's time to think about virtual tabletop exercises in order to ensure that your plan remains viable and up to date.
Employers and employees alike are wondering… can vaccines be required for workers to return to the office? Seems like an easy answer since the law is clear that COVID-19 vaccination can be required as a condition of employment (with certain caveats). However, as the saying goes, nothing is as simple as it seems.
Tabletop Exercises serve as critical tools for organizations to evaluate their business continuity plans and advance their processes. Like most other training methods, Tabletop Exercises cannot remain stagnant. They must be evaluated and further developed over time to include new considerations and opportunities. By following these five tips, you can improve your next Tabletop Exercise and impart essential skills to all participants.
