What Bar Rescue Teaches Us About Incident Response Tabletop Exercises

If you’re familiar with the show Bar Rescue, you know how each episode typically plays out.

A bar on the verge of shutting down agrees to pull back the doors, bust open the books, and make the call for help to Bar Rescue and Jon Taffer. The strategy is simple, observe the current state of the operations, apply stress, expose breakdowns in communications and systems, then implement solutions.

Ultimately, the same truth comes out episode after episode. It’s not just an issue with the drinks or the food, it’s an issue with consistency, leadership, processes, and execution under pressure.

Incident response tabletop exercises are no different.

A Tabletop Is Not Just a Walkthrough, It’s a Stress Test

A key element to every episode is the wildly entertaining (for us viewers, at least) stress test. The bar is intentionally packed with customers, waiting times begin to become unmanageable, and the staff is understandably overwhelmed. This exercise is key to uncovering the real issues and deficiencies that need to be rectified.

A well-designed incident response tabletop exercise should achieve the same goal. It creates pressure and tests high stakes decision making in a controlled environment based on a simulated cyber event, and tests how the organization responds. For a bar or restaurant, will they be at maximum capacity with lines out the door every night? Most likely not. Same goes for a cyber incident. Will all processes and systems fail at once, or will that critical point of contact be unavailable every time an incident occurs? Maybe not, but organizations need to prepare for the “What If?”

Responsibilities are Key

When it comes to the bar business, the breakdown isn’t always faulty equipment, or the product being served. It’s an uncertainty around roles and responsibilities. Who’s responsible for running food from the kitchen, restocking glassware or managing the floor? All this uncertainty creates confusion, slows down production and negatively impacts the customer experience.

The same can be said for cyber incidents. Who is leading and coordinating the response efforts? Who is communicating? What is being said to customers? How are legal and regulatory requirements being handled? A strong tabletop exercise will help shed light on any potential gaps in these processes and ensure that if/when the time comes, the best decisions are being made are the right time.

The Goal is to Maintain Discipline

While the purpose of the show itself is entertainment for the audience, it’s also intended to transform the business to ensure future success. Similarly, the purpose of an incident response tabletop exercise should not be to “check to the box” and simply be able to say your organization has done one. It is to strengthen muscle memory at all levels of the organization before a real crisis or incident occurs.

Cyber incidents are inevitable, breakdowns in roles and responsibilities and processes are preventable.

What We Are Seeing

Across organizations, a few consistent themes continue to emerge when it comes to incident response tabletop exercises.

• Lack of clear objectives: Exercises are often conducted without a defined goal, making it difficult to measure success or provide meaningful lessons learned, action items, and areas of improvement.
• Documentation gaps: Incident response and business continuity documentation is often outdated, incomplete, or not easily usable during an actual event, limiting its effectiveness during a crisis or incident.
• Over-reliance on key individuals: Many organizations depend heavily on one or two individuals to lead or coordinate the response, creating a single point of failure if those individuals are unavailable during an incident.
  
  

How to Make Tabletop Exercises More Effective

To get the most value out of a tabletop exercise, organizations should shift their focus from simply walking through a scenario, to actually testing how the business operates under pressure. This means designing exercises that challenge leadership decision-making, reinforce clear roles and responsibilities, and incorporate realistic levels of uncertainty. Exercises should also be treated as part of a continuous improvement and learning process, with the lessons learned being documented and tracked to ensure plans and processes are actively being solidified before a real-world event occurs. Ultimately, the most effective tabletop exercises are those that strengthen alignment, build confidence, and prepare the organization to respond decisively when it matters most.

If your organization is looking to evaluate or mature its incident response readiness, tabletop exercises can provide valuable insight into leadership alignment and operational resilience. For more information on designing effective exercises tailored to your organization, please contact  info@klogixsecurity.com.