When the Plan Meets Reality: How Tabletop Exercises Expose the Gaps in Disaster Recovery
Most organizations today, including courts, have a disaster recovery plan.
It’s written. It’s approved. It may even satisfy audit, compliance, or insurance requirements.
And yet, when a real incident occurs, ransomware, human errors, system corruption, or power failure, many organizations still struggle to recover their data quickly, completely, and confidently. For courts, that struggle can directly affect access to case records, hearing schedules, and public trust.
The problem is rarely a lack of planning.
The problem is that the plan has never met reality.
This is where tabletop exercises become one of the most important tools in data loss protection. Often overlooked in disaster planning, tabletop exercises bridge the gap between what an organization expects will happen during a disruption and what actually unfolds when systems fail, decisions must be made quickly, and essential court records are suddenly unavailable.
Let’s explore what tabletop exercises are, why disaster recovery plans fail without them, how they expose real-world data protection gaps, and how court systems can run effective tabletop exercises without technical complexity.
The False Sense of Security in “Having a Plan”
Most organizations can confidently say they have a disaster recovery plan. It has been written, reviewed, and approved. In many cases, it has satisfied audit requirements, insurance questionnaires, or compliance checklists. On paper, this creates a sense of preparedness, a belief that the organization is protected against data loss because a plan exists.
The problem is that a written plan does not guarantee recoverability. Disaster recovery plans are often created during moments of urgency, after a security incident, during an insurance renewal, or as part of a major technology change, and then quietly set aside once the immediate pressure passes. Over time, systems evolve, vendors change, staff roles shift, and new data dependencies emerge, while the plan itself remains static.
From a data protection perspective, this gap is especially dangerous for courts. Backups may still be running, but no one has verified whether essential records can be restored within the required timeframes. Recovery time objectives may be based on assumptions rather than real-world testing. Access credentials may no longer be valid, and documentation may reference infrastructure or applications that no longer exist. When an actual incident occurs, organizations often discover that their confidence was built on outdated or untested information.
A disaster recovery plan that has never been exercised does not reduce the risk of data loss; it simply postpones the discovery of weaknesses until the moment when failure is most costly.
What Is a Tabletop Exercise?
A tabletop exercise is a structured, discussion-based simulation that allows an organization to walk through a realistic disruption scenario without impacting live systems. Rather than testing technology directly, tabletop exercises focus on how people, processes, and decisions come together when critical data or access to essential records is unavailable or at risk.
During a tabletop exercise, participants are presented with a scenario, such as ransomware encrypting case management systems, accidental deletion of essential databases, or loss of access to backups due to a cloud outage, and asked to respond as if the event were unfolding in real time. The conversation progresses in stages, forcing teams to evaluate what data is affected, how recovery decisions are made, who has authority to act, and how quickly essential records can be restored to support judicial operations.
Organizations such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) consistently emphasize tabletop exercises as a foundational element of preparedness because they expose gaps that technical tools alone cannot reveal. They test assumptions, clarify ownership, and reveal disconnects between documented plans and actual understanding.
Most importantly, tabletop exercises make data protection tangible. They shift disaster recovery planning from abstract documentation to practical execution, helping courts understand whether their plans can truly prevent extended data loss and operational disruption when it matters most.
Why Disaster Recovery Plans Fail Without Testing
Disaster recovery plans rarely fail because they are poorly written. They fail because they are built on assumptions that have never been challenged. When plans are not tested, organizations tend to overestimate how quickly data can be recovered and underestimate the complexity of coordinating people, vendors, and interconnected systems during an incident.
Common assumptions, such as backups being immediately accessible, vendors responding within agreed timeframes, or leadership knowing when to declare an incident, often collapse under real-world conditions. Without testing, these weaknesses remain invisible. When a data loss event occurs, teams are forced to make critical decisions for the first time under pressure, with incomplete information and unclear authority.
This lack of rehearsal directly increases the risk of prolonged outages and permanent data loss. Recovery delays compound quickly when responsibilities are unclear, documentation is outdated, or recovery procedures have never been followed end to end. Instead of executing a coordinated response, organizations find themselves improvising during the most disruptive moments.
Tabletop exercises expose these failure points safely and intentionally. By simulating data loss scenarios in advance, organizations can identify where plans break down, refine recovery strategies, and ensure that when essential records are at risk, response efforts are driven by tested knowledge rather than guesswork.
What Tabletop Exercises Test That Written Plans Do Not
- Data-Centric Decision-Making Under Pressure
When systems go down, the most important questions are rarely technical first; they are strategic. Courts must determine which records are essential to restore first, how much data loss is tolerable, who has the authority to initiate recovery, and when to escalate internally or externally. Tabletop exercises force these decisions into the open before data is actually lost.
- Communication Gaps That Put Data at Risk
Disaster recovery plans often list contact names, but tabletop exercises reveal whether those contacts are current, whether escalation paths are clear, and whether responsibilities are understood across IT, operations, legal, and leadership. Poor communication doesn’t just slow recovery; it increases the risk of missteps, delays, and extended loss of access to essential records.
- Role Confusion During Data Recovery
During tabletop exercises, organizations frequently discover that backup owners were unaware of their responsibilities, executives are unclear about their role in approving recovery actions, or no clear backup owner exists if a key individual is unavailable. When recovering data under pressure, unclear ownership leads to hesitation, and hesitation leads to extended outages and increased threats to data protection.
- Hidden Assumptions About Data Protection
Tabletop exercises routinely expose assumptions such as “backups are offline and immutable,” “we can restore everything within four hours,” or “this system isn’t critical.” Until these assumptions are challenged, they remain unverified and potentially dangerous.
How to Run a Tabletop Exercise Without Technical Expertise
One of the most persistent misconceptions about tabletop exercises is that they require deep technical knowledge or specialized tools. In reality, effective tabletop exercises, especially in court environments, are less about technology and more about decision-making, communication, and continuity of access to essential records. Courts do not need to simulate system failures at a technical level to test whether their disaster recovery and Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) will work in practice.
A well-run tabletop exercise focuses on how people respond when critical records are unavailable and how quickly judicial operations can continue under constrained conditions.
Step 1: Choose a Data-Loss-Centered Scenario
Begin with a realistic, high-impact scenario that directly threatens essential court records or access to them. The scenario should reflect risks courts already recognize and plan for, rather than hypothetical generic cases.
Examples include:
- Ransomware encrypts a case management system during active dockets
- Accidental deletion or corruption of electronic case files or evidence records
- A hardware failure prevents access to digital filings and archives
- A power failure or weather incident disrupts access to scheduling, filings, or payment systems
The objective is not to test systems in isolation, but to evaluate how the court restores access to essential records that support mission-essential judicial functions.
Step 2: Include the Right Participants
Tabletop exercises are most effective when they reflect the reality that data loss affects far more than IT. For courts, this means involving representatives who understand both operational and legal implications of record unavailability.
Overall, those who should typically be included in the exercise are:
- IT and information security
- Court administration and operations
- Clerk of the court or records management
- Finance or payments administration
- Legal, compliance, or risk management
- Executive or judicial leadership
However, anyone with a role or responsibility during a data loss crisis should be at the table, too. Having all of these perspectives during the exercise tests not only technical recovery assumptions, but also policy decisions, authority, and continuity of operations.
Step 3: Assign a Neutral Facilitator
The facilitator’s role is not to solve problems, but to guide the discussion and challenge assumptions. This person may be internal or external, but should remain neutral and focused on outcomes.
A strong facilitator will:
- Present the scenario in stages, as conditions evolve
- Ask simple but critical questions such as “What happens next?”
- Push participants to explain decisions, not just state them
- Keep the conversation centered on data protection, essential records, and continuity
The goal is to expose gaps in understanding, not to assign blame or test individual performance.
Step 4: Walk Through the Timeline as It Unfolds
Rather than jumping straight to recovery, simulate the incident step by step. This helps participants recognize delays, dependencies, and decision points that are often overlooked.
Key questions to explore include:
- How and when is the data issue detected?
- Which essential records are affected first?
- When does leadership formally declare an incident?
- Do key staff members understand their roles and responsibilities?
- Have action items been accurately documented?
- Are all tasks well-defined and in priority order?
- How is backup integrity verified?
- Who has the authority to approve restoration actions?
- In what order are systems and records restored, and why?
For courts, this timeline discussion often reveals that restoring one system without another does not meaningfully support judicial operations.
Step 5: Document Everything
The most valuable output of a tabletop exercise is not the discussion itself, but what is learned and documented afterward. These findings should feed directly back into COOP and disaster recovery documentation.
Common outputs include:
- Identified gaps in essential records protection
- Unclear ownership or decision authority
- Unrealistic recovery timelines
- Missing, outdated, or conflicting procedures
This documentation becomes actionable guidance, allowing courts to refine recovery priorities, update roles, and strengthen data protection strategies before a real disruption occurs.
Why This Matters for Courts
Tabletop exercises allow courts to validate that COOP plans do more than exist; they actually support continuity of judicial operations when essential records are unavailable. They ensure that recovery expectations are grounded in reality, authority is clearly defined, and access to critical records can be restored in a way that preserves public trust.
Most importantly, tabletop exercises provide courts with a safe environment to discover weaknesses before those weaknesses disrupt proceedings, delay justice, or compromise the integrity of court records.
Real-World Lessons: When Untested Plans Disrupt COOP and Essential Records
Across public-sector organizations, including U.S. court systems, after-action reviews consistently reveal the same underlying issue: continuity and disaster recovery plans exist, but assumptions about essential records access and data restoration have never been validated. COOP documentation may identify mission-essential functions and designate essential records, yet recovery procedures are often theoretical, never exercised in a way that reflects real-world constraints, system interdependencies, or staffing realities.
This gap becomes most visible during cyber incidents and system outages affecting courts. Following the widely reported 2023 ransomware attack on Dallas County[i], public statements and subsequent reporting noted that while continuity plans and backups were in place, restoring access to court-related systems took weeks. Judicial operations were forced into manual workarounds, access to electronic case files was limited, and routine court functions were delayed.[ii] The disruption was not solely the result of encrypted systems, but of recovery sequencing challenges, interdependent applications, and essential records workflows that had not been fully exercised in advance.
Similar challenges have surfaced in other large judicial environments, including incidents affecting the Los Angeles Superior Court, where outages and security-related disruptions have periodically impacted electronic filing systems and digital access to court records[iii]. While official communications often emphasize restoration progress, broader public reporting highlights a recurring reality: essential records may be identified on paper, but restoring timely access to them during a disruption is far more complex than most plans anticipate.
In events impacting court systems, organizations frequently discover that essential records span multiple platforms, case management systems, document repositories, email, identity services, and third-party integrations, and that restoring one system without another does not meaningfully support mission-essential functions. Backup credentials may be compromised alongside production environments, archived case data may not be prioritized for restoration, and recovery timelines outlined in COOP plans prove unrealistic once tested against operational demands.
These failures are rarely the result of neglect or lack of investment. More often, they stem from continuity and disaster recovery plans that have never been exercised in a way that forces teams to confront how essential records are actually accessed, validated, and restored during a crisis.
Tabletop exercises provide that missing validation step. By simulating realistic disruptions to essential records and mission-critical data, court systems can safely test whether their COOP plans support continuity of judicial operations in practice, not just in theory. For organizations entrusted with preserving the integrity, availability, and public accessibility of court records, discovering recovery gaps during a tabletop exercise, rather than during an actual outage, is not simply best practice. It is a fundamental requirement of operational resilience and public trust.
From Insight to Assurance: Turning Tabletop Exercises into Real Data Protection
The real value of tabletop exercises is what they reveal, and what organizations do next. For courts, these exercises expose gaps in recovery timelines, unclear ownership of essential records, and untested assumptions about how quickly data can be restored. Addressing those gaps turns disaster recovery and COOP plans from static documents into proven, operational tools.
This is the difference between having a plan and knowing it works. Courts that rely solely on written documentation hope their data protection strategy will perform as expected. Courts that conduct tabletop exercises and act on the findings have confidence that essential records can be restored in time to support judicial operations. When data loss threatens access to justice and public trust, confidence comes from preparation that has been tested, not assumptions that have been recorded.
That confidence ultimately depends on the strength of the underlying data protection strategy. Validated recovery plans require backup systems that are redundant, continuously monitored, and designed for rapid restoration of essential records.
At VaultTek, our vault-tight data protection approach is built around those principles. Grounded in the proven 3-2-1 backup methodology, VaultTek provides triple-redundant protection with a secure on-site backup and two geographically separate U.S.-based off-site backups – supported by proactive monitoring and personalized service. When plans are tested or real disruptions occur, courts know their data protection strategy is ready.
For courts entrusted with safeguarding essential records, preparedness is not measured by how well a plan is written, but by how reliably data can be protected and restored when it matters most.