When the Boardroom Becomes the Battleground
Cyber crises don’t wait for convenient timing. Compromised Agenda, a CyberEd.io interactive, simulates the nightmare scenario: an enterprise board or executive meeting under attack. Participants must respond as threat actors disrupt the very forum where the most critical decisions are made. With targeted phishing, deepfakes, agenda manipulation, and insider confusion, this exercise tests whether leadership can govern through chaos.
Compromised Agenda: The scenario
The exercise unfolds over a single “executive meeting day” and builds intensity through staged injects:
Stage 1 – Subtle Manipulation:
- Spear-Phishing Emails: Several executives receive “meeting prep” documents carrying malicious macros.
- Calendar Anomalies: Board packets are updated with altered agenda items — including fake resolutions.
- Threat Intel Alert: SOC surfaces chatter of an APT group targeting board-level communications.
Stage 2 – Disruption in Motion:
- Video Deepfake Call: A “CEO” appears on a secure call, instructing finance to accelerate a wire transfer.
- VPN Alerts: A board member’s device authenticates from two geographies simultaneously.
- Insider Confusion: An executive assistant receives “urgent” instructions to print and distribute a compromised deck.
Stage 3 – Strategic Paralysis:
- Media Leak: Journalists tweet screenshots of supposed board decisions that were never made.
- Regulator Inquiry: Demands confirmation of governance controls around financial approvals.
- Boardroom Chaos: Half the members argue to suspend the meeting, others demand immediate action, while attackers continue injecting confusion.
Participants must decide: Do they shut down the meeting to secure systems? Can they validate leadership identity under deepfake threats? How do they keep governance moving forward when the agenda itself is compromised?
Compromised Agenda makes governance resilience tangible.
By combining deepfake deception, insider confusion, and technical injects with executive decision-making under pressure, it ensures enterprises can lead with clarity even when the boardroom itself is under attack.
Schedule Compromised AgendaLearning outcomes
Compromised Agenda develops competencies that few organizations ever test in practice:
Leadership verification:
Establish rapid protocols to authenticate executives under deepfake/social engineering threats.
Agenda integrity:
Ensure sensitive decisions cannot be hijacked through document or workflow manipulation.
Crisis governance:
Maintain quorum and continuity even amid communications breakdowns.
Targeted threat response:
Correlate spear-phishing, compromised credentials, and insider vectors in real time.
Strategic communication:
Align messaging for shareholders, regulators, and media while facts remain contested.
Information integrity:
Detect and mitigate manipulation of board materials, communications, and decisions before false narratives take hold.
Enterprise value
For enterprises, this exercise is a stress test of governance resilience:
- Validates Leadership Security: Do your executives practice MFA hygiene, device hardening, and phishing resilience?
- Tests Boardroom Continuity Plans: Is there a playbook if meetings cannot proceed securely?
- Exposes Insider Process Gaps: Can executive assistants, IT support, and legal staff recognize red flags?
- Builds Trust at the Top: Demonstrates to boards and investors that the enterprise has rehearsed executive-level attacks.
Industry-tailored injects may include:
Financial Services
Wire transfer fraud attempts disguised as “strategic investments.”
Healthcare
Altered board approvals tied to compliance and HIPAA oversight.
Manufacturing
Fake authorizations issued for plant shutdowns or major acquisitions.
Public Sector
Deepfakes issuing policy directives from senior company officials.
Technical inject library
Identity/IAM:
Duplicate logins, suspicious MFA push approvals, abnormal VPN logins.
Email/phishing:
Spoofed “Board Packet” PDFs with macro payloads, fake DocuSign requests.
Comms/deepfake:
Synthetic audio/video used to impersonate executives in real time.
Document manipulation:
Subtly altered agenda slides and forged draft resolutions.
Threat intel:
Mock advisories tying activity to known APT groups targeting C-suite leaders.
Governance/legal:
Injects highlighting SEC or GDPR requirements for board-level cyber disclosures.
Decision dilemmas
Suspend or proceed:
Halt the meeting entirely, or continue under modified protocols?
Identity verification:
Trust voices/faces on calls, or enforce emergency re-authentication?
Communication management:
Address media leaks quickly, or wait to regain internal clarity?
Brand continuity:
Can decisions be ratified digitally under duress, or must physical processes be invoked?
Disclosure threshold:
At what point does a compromised meeting become a reportable event?
Legal escalation:
Engage external counsel now—or wait to confirm the incident’s scope?
Delivery models
CyberEd.io offers Compromised Agenda in flexible formats:
On-site simulation:
Realistic injects delivered into boardrooms during live board sessions.
Remote exercise:
Fake calendar invites, deepfake videos, phishing emails delivered via secure platform.
Hybrid:
Executives in-room while SOC/IT teams monitor inject dashboards remotely.
Custom tailoring:
Focus scenarios around industry-specific governance and compliance stakes.
Post-exercise enablement
- After-Action Report: Timeline of board-level decisions and missteps.
- Performance Dashboards: Metrics on response speed, identity verification, and decision integrity.
- Playbook Enhancements: Recommendations for executive comms verification, agenda integrity, and boardroom continuity.
- Executive Training: Reinforcement modules for phishing resilience, device hygiene, and deepfake awareness.
At-a-glance
Audience:
Board members, C-suite executives, CISOs, CIOs, legal/compliance, executive support staff.
Duration:
2–4 hours, with executive debrief.
Difficulty:
Advanced — blending technical threat detection with governance decision-making.
Industry:
Financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, public sector.
Format:
On-site, remote, or hybrid with custom tailoring.
Deliverables:
After-action report, technical injects, governance recommendations, updated executive security playbooks.