Education having fun with tabletop exercises to improve business continuity

A popular phrase in the industry these days is tabletop exercises. A tabletop exercise is a simulation of a crisis situation in a stress-free environment with a focus on training and familiarization with roles and responsibilities. Auditors and examiners are looking for credit unions to produce proof of testing their Incident Response Plan or Business Continuity Plan, and a tabletop exercise is a great way to accomplish that. It also helps to prepare your credit union to keep operations up and running during a business interruption.

A huge benefit of a tabletop exercise is that you can go through a disaster situation without the actual chaos of the event. They also help to identify weaknesses and errors in existing policies, plans, and procedures (including capabilities) that guide response and recovery processes. This article will identify components of a standard tabletop exercise and discuss strategies to make yours successful.

Planning the exercise

Participants

Participants should include people or departments (both internal and external) that are likely to respond or be heavily influenced by the scenario as well as those who may learn from or contribute to the planned discussion topics. If that group would be too large for this type of exercise, you may want to divide it into teams by function or role if necessary (consider group dynamics).

 

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