What is a Cyber Incident Exercising?
Cyber incident exercising is the process of practising cyber response techniques against potential threats in a safe and simulated environment.
The purpose of cyber incident exercising is to prepare cyber security teams for real threat scenarios, where response time is critical.
Its tactics and techniques can be used to establish current organisational practices and formulate an incident response plan (IRP) - or to evaluate the effectiveness of an existing IRP.
The Importance of Cyber Incident Exercising
Our cyber incident exercise service is recommended for any organisation looking to upskill and optimise their cyber security team’s ability and preparedness to handle the latest threats.
In the unfortunate event of a breach, well-practised teams can communicate, respond and remediate the threat effectively to minimise the impact. Several key benefits include:
- Cross-team Coordination: Bridewell’s cyber incident exercising service incorporates multiple departments, from IT to legal and communications. During incident response situations, your teams will gain necessary insight into each role and work collaboratively.
- Realistic Scenarios: Roleplaying scenarios suggested by our cyber incident exercising team are based on threats your organisation faces, updated with current industry trends. This is done to provide a realistic environment in which to pressure test your team.
- Identify Gaps in Security: With Bridewell’s cyber incident exercising service, you’ll be able to review team performance in simulations, so you can spot and amend any gaps in team coordination.
What to Expect from Cyber Incident Exercising with Bridewell
Our cyber incident exercising service is designed to prepare your organisation for an effective response against cyber attacks.
It replicates the realistic scenarios your organisation might face. So, key staff know their roles and responsibilities when a live incident occurs. This means less time speculating and more time responding in the face of a real attack.
The key components of our cyber incident exercising service include:
Realistic Simulations
Cyber incident exercising offers tailored simulations that imitate a real cyber attack. This is based on risks, vulnerabilities, and industry threats, to make the simulation highly relevant to a specific organisation. These attacks can range from ransomware to data breaches or insider threats. The aim is to challenge your organisation’s response capabilities and pressure test your team to identify gaps in your remediation process.
Team Involvement
Bridewell’s cyber incident exercising service incorporates members from various departments, including IT, security, communications and legal. This helps ensure that everyone within your organisation is coordinated in its approach to cyber threats.
Cyber Live Play Exercises
Bridewell’s Live Play exercises emulate an adversary incident as a trigger event - adding realism that goes beyond the boardroom table. Technical Live Play is based on your organisation’s threat landscape and uses MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques to develop incident escalation. Executive Live Play focuses on senior decision-making, leadership response and communication in the event of a live attack.
Tactical Guidance
Bridewell’s cyber security experts provide tactical guidance in real-time, offering advice and helping teams understand best practices and improve response strategies.
Debrief and Improvement Plans
Our team of experts will provide a debrief and feedback post-simulation to help break down gaps in team performance and provide actionable plans for improvements going forward.
Learn more about our Incident Response Services
If you require a cyber incident exercising service, speak with one of our team to see how we can support.
Cyber Incident Exercising FAQs
Why Us?
Awards
Our team have won numerous industry awards, including 'Cyber Security Company of the Year' at the Cyber Security Awards 2026 and Best Cyber Security Service Provider' at the Cyber Security Awards 2025.
Certifications
Our people and services are highly accredited by leading industry bodies including CREST, the NCSC, and more. Our SOC holds extensive accreditations from CREST (including for CSIR and SOC2) and works closely with our cyber consultancy services.
Partnerships
As a Microsoft Partner, we also hold advanced specialisms in Cloud Security and Threat Protection. We’ve also implemented some of the UK’s largest deployments of the Microsoft Security stack, inc. Sentinel, Defender, Purview and more.