Every 39 seconds, another cyberattack strikes. Your organization’s complacency could be disastrous. One effective strategy to enhance your organization’s defenses and prove readiness for threats is to implement cyber drills. These tailored exercises simulate real-life cyber attack scenarios, allowing teams to practice their response and improve resilience.
So, what exactly are cyber drills, why should they be a crucial part of your security posture, and how can they help prove capabilities?
What is a Cyber Drill?
Cyber drills are facilitated training sessions that are both structured and customizable. They are designed to measure, prove, and enhance an organization’s response and human cyber capabilities. They can be run on your schedule; quarterly, annually, monthly, or as needed – offering flexibility to fit your organization’s specific needs. The key feature of Cyber Drills is their adaptability; they can be adapted to your organization’s goals, schedule, and the availability of personnel.
Why Conduct Cyber Drills?
- Cohesion between teams: Cyber drills bring together both business and technical personnel, ensuring a comprehensive response strategy. Executives and technical staff participate in the same simulation-based training, which helps foster collaboration and communication during crises.
- Holistic learning experience: Participants are divided into groups focusing on different aspects of incident response—such as managing a cyber range or drafting a press release—allowing them to understand how their decisions affect the overall situation.
- Organizational Impact: Cyber drills benefit the entire workforce by providing exercises to gather data for drills and post-drill remediation.
- Targeted upskilling and reporting: Post-drill reports highlight knowledge gaps, enabling targeted upskilling for specific teams or individuals. This ensures continuous improvement and preparedness against evolving cyber threats.
- Diverse skill levels: Cyber drills can be designed to cater to various skill levels—from detailed technical drills for IT staff to high-level business simulations for executives — ensuring that everyone in the organization is equipped to respond effectively.
Measuring cyber resilience
These exercises not only provide an initial snapshot of your organization’s preparedness but also allow for targeted exercises to drive behavioral change after the drill. By identifying strengths and weaknesses, cyber drills empower organizations to enhance their defenses and respond more effectively to potential threats. In this section, we’ll explore how these drills can be leveraged to measure and strengthen your organization’s overall cyber resilience.
- Initial assessment: They provide a baseline measurement of your organization’s current preparedness and highlight areas that need improvement.
- Post-drill evaluation: After follow-up training, Cyber drills can measure the effectiveness of upskilling initiatives, confirming whether gaps have been successfully addressed.
Implementing Cyber Drills
Successful implementation of a cyber drill involves several key steps:
Step 1. Define objectives: Collaborate with an internal champion to set clear goals for what you want to measure and prove through the drill.
Step 2. Assemble the right team: Identify who needs to participate. This includes technical staff, executive leadership, and relevant third parties depending on the scope of the drill.
Step 3. Customize the drill: Tailor the scenarios to reflect your organization’s specific risks, whether that’s ransomware, phishing attacks, or supply chain vulnerabilities.
Step 4. Decide on detail level: Strike a balance between necessary detail and practical execution. Focus on what’s crucial for achieving your objectives without getting bogged down in minutiae.
Step 5. Foster continuous improvement: Use feedback from each drill to refine future exercises, ensuring that your organization continually adapts to the evolving threat landscape.
Overcoming resistance to training
One common concern organizations express is a lack of time for additional training. Here’s how to address that:
- Make It manageable: Work with your team to integrate Cyber Drills into existing schedules, using micro drills that fit seamlessly into daily operations.
- Leverage expertise: Utilize customer success teams or consult with engineers to streamline the training process and enhance engagement.
- Focus on ROI: Emphasize that the return on investment (ROI) from CyberDrills isn’t just about financial metrics. It’s about being prepared to avoid the costly repercussions of cyber incidents.
Cyber drills are an essential tool for organizations seeking to prove their cyber resilience and deliver behavioral change that improves human cyber capabilities. By fostering collaboration between technical and business teams, providing targeted organization-wide training, and measuring preparedness, Cyber drills prepare organizations not just to respond to cyber threats, but to thrive in an increasingly complex digital environment. As cyber threats evolve, so must our strategies for defense and response — making cyber drills a critical component of any comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.
To learn more about strategies for building a cyber drills program, check out the webinar: Hone Your Human Edge: How to Build an Effective Cyber Drills Program.