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Databarracks Cyber Recovery Wargame

On Wednesday 19th June, we invited over 90 senior business leaders to the Tate Modern for a Cyber Recovery Wargame. In a deep-dive exercise on cyber resilience, guests assumed the role of a crisis management team as they formulated a best practice response to disaster.

Our Resilience Director, Chris Butler, hosted the day’s activities with support from Paul Wilford, Solutions Consultant Manager at NormCyber. Focusing on an attack on the fictitious “Heathwickstead” airport, the duo led attendees through three phases of a disaster – the emerging crisis, response and recovery.

The event was an excellent opportunity to discuss the most pressing cyber threats facing businesses, as well as proven strategies for co-ordinating teams in response to an attack. Real-life experiences and insights were crucial to discussions on the day, with individual contributions and interactive polls guiding the conversation.

Chris Butler, Resilience Director, Databarracks

In the ever-evolving cyber and risk landscape, now is more important than ever for senior executives to be prepared for a major cyber-attack. The Cyber Recovery Wargame was our way of bringing professionals together to share and learn from their expertise.

Assessing resilience and risk

The Wargame included strategies for co-ordinating internal and external teams, as well as analysis of recent attacks on The British Library, Colonial Pipeline and The City of Oakland. At each stage of the exercise, groups shared their own experiences of crisis response and planning, which enabled us to develop an actionable plan.

Early in the day, guests were surveyed on the greatest risks facing their organisations. Supply chain disruption, cyber-attacks and ransomware quickly emerged as key pain points, with the evolving potential of AI also being explored as a risk factor. Particular focus was placed on the potential use of AI to generate highly-convincing misinformation.

Chris Butler, Resilience Director, Databarracks

Maintaining resilience in the face of growing threats like ransomware and AI-enabled tools is a constant challenge. Sharing our knowledge is critical to ensure that we stay one step ahead of the groups that can cause organisations serious financial and reputational harm.

Key lessons for the future

Towards the end of the Wargame exercise itself, activities for enhanced business resilience became a focal point of discussion. Guests expressed that cyber incident exercising was their number one priority, closely followed by Business Continuity planning and executive-level crisis management.

This sentiment led naturally into the networking lunch, a high-energy affair where everyone was keen to share their industry-specific knowledge and lessons from the event. This was followed by a guided tour of current exhibitions at the Tate – a fantastic way to end the day following a few hours of rigorous analysis and debate.

Chris Butler, Resilience Director, Databarracks

We hope that all attendees will have come away with new strategies to integrate best practices for business and technology resilience into their organisation. Thanks to some excellent contributions from our audience, the event proved to be an excellent forum to discuss real-life continuity plans and lessons learned from disasters.

A message of thanks

Following a hugely successful event, we would like to thank everyone who attended for their enthusiasm and excellent contributions on the day. We look forward to hosting similar exercises in future, and we hope to see even more of you there.

For those unable to attend, or simply for a recap of the day, you can access the slides here: Download slides