Tabletop exercises are designed to test what aspect?

• A. Marketing communications during a crisis
• B. Hardware maintenance schedule
• C. Readiness and decision-making in a simulated scenario
• D. Physical security procedures

Answer: (C)

Tabletop exercises test readiness and decision-making in a simulated scenario. They are discussion-based drills where participants walk through an incident, describe their roles, and decide on actions, escalation, and communications as if the event were real. The goal is to see how well teams coordinate, what information they need, who has authority to make decisions, and how plans would be activated under pressure. This helps uncover gaps in incident response, governance, and inter-team collaboration without the risks of real-world execution. While marketing messaging, hardware maintenance schedules, or physical security procedures are important in their own right, tabletop exercises focus on how people think through and decide what to do during an incident in a controlled, hypothetical setting.