Reading about a cyber incident teaches you facts. Living through one, even a simulated one, teaches you judgement. Make the calls, see the consequences, and find out how ready you really are.

What it is

An interactive, choose-your-own-disaster scenario. A ransomware attack unfolds on your business in stages. At each step you decide what to do, and your choices change what happens next, how much it costs, and how fast you recover. There are no trick questions, just the real decisions a business owner faces under pressure.

How to use it effectively

1. Play it as yourself. Answer how you honestly think you or your team would react on the day, not how you think you "should". That is where the learning is.
2. Notice the early decisions. The choices in the first few minutes (do you power off, do you pay, who do you call) shape the entire outcome. Pay attention to why.
3. Run it with your team. Play it together in a meeting. The discussion it sparks about "what would we actually do?" is worth more than any policy document.
4. Replay with different choices. Go back and try the paths you avoided. Seeing how a single decision changes the cost makes the lesson stick.

Why it matters

When a real incident hits, people freeze or react on instinct, and instinct is often wrong: powering machines off destroys evidence, paying a ransom funds the next attack and rarely brings data back cleanly. Businesses that have mentally rehearsed the scenario make calmer, better decisions. This simulator is that rehearsal, in ten minutes, for free.