Scenario-driven exercises that stress-test decision-making, coordination, and resilience under pressure.
Real-World Scenarios
Attack simulations help leadership understand how a real disruption would unfold in your environment, including which decisions matter, when they need to be made, and what happens when information is incomplete. This page explains how simulations work, what they test, and how to apply the results.
Most organizations assume the hard part of an incident is detection. In practice, the hardest part is what comes next: aligning on what is happening, deciding what to do first, and coordinating across teams while the situation changes.
Attack simulations are designed for that reality. We assume compromise is possible, then test whether the organization can contain impact, preserve trust, and make decisions that hold up afterward.
A simulation is not a tabletop exercise with scripted answers. It is a controlled stress test of decision-making, coordination, and resilience.
Security programs accumulate tools, findings, and plans. Simulations reveal whether those inputs translate into real-world behavior.
The goal is not theatrics. The goal is to reduce uncertainty where it is most expensive: at the moment decisions have to be made.
We build scenarios around business disruption, not generic attacker checklists. Each engagement is scoped to test the decisions you actually expect leaders to make.
We start with business impact, operating constraints, and decision ownership. The scenario is designed to force real choices, not to validate paperwork.
We guide the exercise through an evolving incident timeline, capturing assumptions, escalation paths, and points where the organization slows down or fragments.
We turn observations into specific decisions, changes, and follow-up testing. The output is a practical set of moves leadership can stand behind.
If you also need technical validation, simulations can be paired with penetration testing of specifics systems or platforms, but the objectives are different.
Common simulation scenarios include:
Operational outage, data pressure, executive decision windows, and vendor coordination.
Lateral movement, privileged access decisions, identity containment, and business continuity tradeoffs.
Dependency impact, communications, contractual constraints, and response accountability across organizations.
We select scenarios based on what would be materially disruptive to your business, not what is fashionable to simulate.
You should come out of a simulation with clarity, not just notes. Typical outputs include:
If you want the executive framing behind this work, start here:
For the broader service context, see: Testing and Assurance Services
We can help you decide what scenario to run, which decisions to test, and how to connect the exercise to real follow-up actions.