How often should businesses test their continuity plans?

Most business continuity frameworks recommend testing at least once per year, with regulated industries often required to test more frequently. Financial institutions subject to FFIEC or NCUA guidance, and healthcare organizations under HIPAA, typically need to document testing annually at minimum. Agility Recovery helps organizations design a testing cadence that meets both operational and regulatory requirements.

What is the difference between a tabletop exercise and a live simulation?

A tabletop exercise is a discussion-based session where leadership and key staff walk through a simulated disruption scenario to evaluate their response procedures — no physical resources are deployed. A live simulation activates actual recovery resources, equipment, and personnel to test whether the plan works in practice. Both are valuable, and Agility Recovery offers ten testing formats to match your organization’s readiness goals.

Do business continuity tests satisfy regulatory and audit requirements?

Yes, when structured correctly. Agility Recovery designs testing programs that produce the documentation, scenario coverage, and gap analysis reports required by regulators including FFIEC, NCUA, HIPAA, and ISO 22301. Test results can be submitted directly to auditors as evidence of your continuity program’s effectiveness.

What happens if our continuity plan fails during a test?

A plan that reveals gaps during testing is doing its job. Agility Recovery facilitates a post-test debrief that identifies what failed, why it failed, and what needs to change. Finding a gap in a controlled exercise is far less costly than discovering it during an actual disruption. Most organizations emerge from failed tests with stronger, more realistic plans.

What is a business continuity tabletop exercise?

A business continuity tabletop exercise is a facilitated discussion where key staff work through a realistic disaster scenario — such as a power outage, cyberattack, or building loss — to evaluate their response procedures, decision-making, and communication. Agility Recovery facilitates tabletop exercises for organizations across all seven of its core industry verticals.

How does Agility tailor risk planning to my industry?

Agility Recovery builds risk assessments and testing programs around the specific threats, regulatory requirements, and operational dependencies of your industry. A credit union faces different risks than a manufacturer or a logistics provider. Agility’s team develops scenarios and gap analyses that reflect your actual environment rather than a generic framework.

What risk planning and testing services does Agility offer?

Agility Recovery offers business impact analysis, risk assessments, plan development, and ten testing formats including tabletop exercises, live simulations, call tree tests, and IT recovery tests. These services are available as part of an Agility membership and can be customized to satisfy audit, regulatory, or internal governance requirements.

Emergency Hotline

Risk Planning & Testing

A Plan You’ve Never Tested Is a Guess

Agility helps organizations build, validate, and continuously improve business continuity plans through facilitated exercises, live simulations, and structured annual programs.

Talk to a Recovery Specialist

17%

higher recovery success rates for companies with continuity plans in place (Arcserve)

Tabletop Exercise

A facilitated, scenario-based exercise that walks your team through disruption without stopping operations. Works for organizations at any stage of continuity maturity. Includes pre-test consultation, post-test documentation, and a certificate of completion for regulators and auditors.

Live Simulation

A full-scale test conducted at your actual facility or field site under real-world conditions. Validates your procedures, uncovers gaps that tabletop exercises miss, and gives leadership and auditors documented proof that your plan works.

Plan a Live Site Simulation

More Testing Types

Quickship Test

Our team will coordinate shipping, delivery, and pickup for all equipment to your location for three consecutive days of testing. This allows your team to confirm your technology package supports your work requirements.

Onsite Test

Using a controlled environment in one of our testing facilities guided by our team of experts, you can strengthen your plans, build resilience, clarify organizational responsibilities, and guarantee your resources meet your recovery needs.

Remote Site Test

Conduct your test at a remote mobile testing center stocked with all the necessary equipment. Choose from any of the following locations:

College Station, TX
Northborough, MA
Oakville, ON

Mobile Test

Agility will deliver any or all the components of your recovery solution to your location so you can conduct preemptive testing. The entire test is led onsite by our network engineer and your expert test manager. With one day of setup, two for testing, and one for equipment removal, mobile testing is a quick and easy way to ensure the effectiveness of your BCP.

ReadyOffice Test

Practice working in a recovery office space for up to two consecutive days each year in more than 3000 locations worldwide. Be at your desk within 24 hours, with everything you’d need to recover from a disaster and ensure continuity of your business.

Guided Tabletop Exercise

Agility’s guided tabletop exercises walk your team through a simulated, scripted crisis and asks participants to react and respond to events as they unfold. One of our expert strategic account managers runs the test with you, guiding your team through the entire process and sharing industry best practices to help you better prepare.

LiveSite Test

Specifically built for banks and credit unions, this test recreates an additional branch to demonstrate the entity’s overall operational ability to achieve critical recovery time objectives in the event of a disaster.

KVM-IP Remote Test

Agility will set up a workstation stocked with a sample of your contracted backup equipment (servers, desktops, etc.) and allow your team to remotely access the equipment via a secure KVM/IP network connection so you can perform connectivity tests and check essential business applications.

Business Recovery Center Test

Conduct your test at a remote mobile testing center with all necessary equipment in the exact environment used for recovery to ensure your solution is perfectly tailored to your business at the time of need. Remote mobile testing centers are in College Station, TX, and Northborough, MA.

Plan Review

Review and audit your plan with your BCP team, C-level management, or department heads to ensure alignment across the organization. Agility’s review exercise is helpful identifying gaps or the need for updates and training new team members during the onboarding process.

Risk Assessment & Impact Analysis

Understand how cyber threats could impact your operations and revenue. From readiness assessments to ransomware impact modeling, we help you measure exposure, prioritize investments, and plan with confidence before an incident occurs.

Penetration Testing

Identify vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. Agility combines automated and expert-led testing to uncover gaps, validate controls, and provide clear remediation guidance so your team can strengthen cyber defenses without disrupting operations.

Put Your Plan to the Test

Schedule Testing

Why Agility?

14+ Test Formats

More test types than any single-solution provider, covering physical, remote, IT, and branch-level scenarios.

Regulator & Auditor Ready

Every exercise produces documentation, certificates of completion, and post-test reports that satisfy compliance requirements.

Annual Test Calendars

Agility builds a full yearly testing program across scenarios, team types, and formats so continuity stays active, not episodic.

35+ Years of Deployments

Testing against real-world conditions, informed by hundreds of actual recovery events.

“Agility’s tabletop testing opened our eyes to vulnerabilities we hadn’t even considered. Their expertise helped us close those gaps, and now we’re confident in our ability to face winter storms head-on.”

Operations Manager, Cold Storage Manufacturer

Read the Story

Most clients have a testing plan in place within one conversation. Let’s build yours before you need it.

Talk to a Recovery Specialist

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should businesses test their continuity plans? +: Most business continuity frameworks recommend testing at least once per year, with regulated industries often required to test more frequently. Financial institutions subject to FFIEC or NCUA guidance, and healthcare organizations under HIPAA, typically need to document testing annually at minimum. Agility Recovery helps organizations design a testing cadence that meets both operational and regulatory requirements.
What is the difference between a tabletop exercise and a live simulation? +: A tabletop exercise is a discussion-based session where leadership and key staff walk through a simulated disruption scenario to evaluate their response procedures — no physical resources are deployed. A live simulation activates actual recovery resources, equipment, and personnel to test whether the plan works in practice. Both are valuable, and Agility Recovery offers ten testing formats to match your organization's readiness goals.
Do business continuity tests satisfy regulatory and audit requirements? +: Yes, when structured correctly. Agility Recovery designs testing programs that produce the documentation, scenario coverage, and gap analysis reports required by regulators including FFIEC, NCUA, HIPAA, and ISO 22301. Test results can be submitted directly to auditors as evidence of your continuity program's effectiveness.
What happens if our continuity plan fails during a test? +: A plan that reveals gaps during testing is doing its job. Agility Recovery facilitates a post-test debrief that identifies what failed, why it failed, and what needs to change. Finding a gap in a controlled exercise is far less costly than discovering it during an actual disruption. Most organizations emerge from failed tests with stronger, more realistic plans.
What is a business continuity tabletop exercise? +: A business continuity tabletop exercise is a facilitated discussion where key staff work through a realistic disaster scenario — such as a power outage, cyberattack, or building loss — to evaluate their response procedures, decision-making, and communication. Agility Recovery facilitates tabletop exercises for organizations across all seven of its core industry verticals.
How does Agility tailor risk planning to my industry? +: Agility Recovery builds risk assessments and testing programs around the specific threats, regulatory requirements, and operational dependencies of your industry. A credit union faces different risks than a manufacturer or a logistics provider. Agility's team develops scenarios and gap analyses that reflect your actual environment rather than a generic framework.
What risk planning and testing services does Agility offer? +: Agility Recovery offers business impact analysis, risk assessments, plan development, and ten testing formats including tabletop exercises, live simulations, call tree tests, and IT recovery tests. These services are available as part of an Agility membership and can be customized to satisfy audit, regulatory, or internal governance requirements.