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Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
Tabletop Pre-Read · Confidential brief
Scenario · v1.0
BBB-26-4EL
Confidential — Exercise Material Reference · BBB-26-4EL
Tabletop pre-read

Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident

InfoNoSecurity Europe is the organiser of Infosecurity Europe 2026, a flagship cybersecurity trade event held at ExCeL London on 2–3 June.

Subject
InfoNoSecurity EuropeMid-market (250-1000)
Sector
Media & Entertainment
Format
Three Acts15 events · 18 MCQs
Duration
~3 hoursPlus debrief
Read this document before the session. It establishes the world, the cast, and the questions on the table — but stops short of the live injects. You will not be quizzed on what is here; you will be tested on how well you carry it into the room.
Created using IncidentResponse.App
Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
Confidential — Exercise Material
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Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
Contents · How to use this brief
Scenario · v1.0
BBB-26-4EL
§ 00 — Front Matter

Contents & House Rules

Facilitator's note

“The point of a tabletop is not to win. It is to find the seams in your response — the handoffs, the assumptions, the silences — while the only thing at stake is your pride.”

House Rules

01Stay in role

Speak from your assigned function. If you would not have the information in real life, you don’t have it here either. Bluffing is fine; lying about facts is not.

02Decisions over plans

The exercise rewards making a call with imperfect information. Document the decision, the rationale, and the dissent — not a perfect plan.

03Time is a player

Each act is timeboxed. The clock will press you toward the wrong answer faster than the adversary will. Notice when it does.

04What stays in the room

Treat scenario detail, observed behaviours, and named decisions as confidential. The post-incident review is for learning, not litigation.

Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
Confidential — Exercise Material
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Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
I · Scenario Overview
Scenario · v1.0
BBB-26-4EL
Spoiler alert If you are a player in this scenario and wish not to have details of the scenario exposed then read no further.
§ I — Scenario Overview

The morning it began

InfoNoSecurity Europe is the organiser of Infosecurity Europe 2026, a flagship cybersecurity trade event held at ExCeL London on 2–3 June. The event draws over 19,000 registered delegates, 400 exhibiting sponsors, and 180 speakers — many of them high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), C-suite executives, and government officials. Delegate registration, speaker management, and sponsor coordination are handled through a cloud-hosted event management platform called EventForge, supplemented by a CRM (Salesforce), a mobile event app, and a legacy on-premises badge-printing system networked into ExCeL's venue infrastructure. The scenario begins on Monday of Week 1 (Mon W1) at 06:00, roughly 72 hours before the event opens. The threat: attackers have silently compromised the EventForge platform via a misconfigured API endpoint, exfiltrating delegate, speaker, and sponsor records including home addresses, dietary preferences, employer data, and VIP access flags. The exfiltrated data is being weaponised in two parallel tracks — a targeted burglary operation against HNWIs known to be attending the event, and a sophisticated spear-phishing campaign launched against the broader delegate pool. The organiser does not yet know any of this.

Subject Profile

Organisation
InfoNoSecurity Europe
Sector
Media & Entertainment
Headcount
Mid-market (250-1000)
Posture
Cloud-migrated
Reading frame

“The story you are about to play through is not a story about clever attackers. It is a story about a company that already had everything it needed to see what was happening — and didn’t look in time.”

The brief unfolds in three acts. Each act introduces a new pressure on the organisation, surfaces a set of core tensions for the room to wrestle with, and culminates in a small number of decisions that will materially shape what comes next. Timeline events and multiple-choice prompts are released live during the session and are deliberately not previewed here.

Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
Confidential — Exercise Material
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Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
II · Part 1 — Build-Up
Scenario · v1.0
BBB-26-4EL
Act One
01

Build-Up — before anyone called it an incident

Anomalies accumulate across functions that don’t routinely talk to each other. The question is not yet what to do — it is whether anything is happening at all, and who has the authority to say so out loud.

5 Timeline events 5 Decision prompts ~45m Runtime

Core tensions

The GDPR 72-hour notification clock began running from the point the anomalous API activity was first flagged — not from when it was confirmed — creating immediate regulatory pressure on an organisation that hadn't yet fully scoped the breach.
The dual-use nature of the exfiltrated data (home addresses collected for badge couriers, dietary codes used for sponsor hospitality) meant that fields captured for operational convenience became vectors for real-world physical harm.
The HNWI burglary strand created a physical safety crisis running in parallel with the cyber incident, requiring rapid triage of which harm — data, physical, or reputational — demanded the highest priority response.
The phishing campaign leveraged highly specific delegate data (real session bookings, badge details) to achieve unusual credibility, undermining delegates' ability to distinguish legitimate event communications from spoofed ones.
The EventForge vendor's rapid pushback on liability, citing a client-configuration email from six weeks prior, introduced a commercial dispute into the incident response at the worst possible moment.
What to bring to the room

“If your organisation declared this an incident on the basis of what is described above — would anyone be surprised? Would anyone be relieved?”

Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
Confidential — Exercise Material
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Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
III · Part 2 — Contagion
Scenario · v1.0
BBB-26-4EL
Act Two
02

Contagion — when the story gets away from you

Encryption lands. A ransom note follows. The press has the outline before the board does. Now the work is no longer technical — it is moral, legal, commercial and human, all at once, on the same conference call.

6 Timeline events 6 Decision prompts ~70m Runtime

Core tensions

The badge system outage on the opening morning created a binary dilemma: treating it as a potential second attack vector and isolating it — causing severe queue chaos — versus rapid restoration that risked compromising forensic integrity.
The Sky News story went live while the event was operational, compressing the crisis communications window to under an hour and forcing a real-time choice between CEO visibility and legal caution on admissions of liability.
Sponsor withdrawal threatened to cascade financially: the combination of lost event revenue, credit note commitments, and forward 2027 booking risk created a compounding financial exposure that demanded CFO and CMO alignment.
The ICO formally opening an assessment while the event was still running meant that all internal decisions from that point carried regulatory scrutiny risk — every email, statement, and disclosure became a potential exhibit.
The escalation to national security status after the fifth burglary (involving an NCSC liaison) changed the legal and political landscape, introducing a government dimension that the organiser's crisis protocols did not anticipate.
What to bring to the room

“Every decision in this act is a trade. Be honest, in the moment, about what you are trading away — and to whom you owe an explanation if you are wrong.”

Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
Confidential — Exercise Material
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Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
IV · Part 3 — Resolution
Scenario · v1.0
BBB-26-4EL
Act Three
03

Resolution — the long road, well-lit

Containment holds. The acute crisis ends and the structural one begins: governance, accountability, architecture, and the public posture the company will live with for the next eighteen months.

4 Timeline events 7 Decision prompts ~60m Runtime

Decisions on the table

Determine whether the CISO and CIO retain their roles, and if so under what revised governance structure with enhanced board-level security reporting.
Approve or reject the proposed £2m security transformation investment programme for Infosecurity Europe 2027, including platform replacement, data minimisation policy, and independent security audit.
Decide on the litigation strategy for the £1.4m+ class action — insurer-led defence, expedited settlement with burglary victims, or full contested defence — and confirm that cyber insurance coverage is adequate for the total exposure.
Set the ICO representations strategy: instruct specialist regulatory counsel to contest the preliminary £1.8m fine, negotiate early settlement, or accept and publish.
Determine the strategic future of the Infosecurity Europe brand — rebuild under the existing entity, explore the PE acquisition approach, or initiate merger discussions with a peer organiser.
What to bring to the room

“The decisions in this act outlive the incident. Treat them as the first eighteen months of a strategy, not the last hour of a crisis.”

Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
Confidential — Exercise Material
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Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
V · Players & Cast
Scenario · v1.0
BBB-26-4EL
§ V — Players & Cast

Who is in the room

Roles are assigned at the start of the session. Each Blue Team and Support player holds decision authority within their function; Red Team roles are voiced by the facilitator and surface through injects rather than direct dialogue.

Blue Team — Executives Players · 7

CEO
Chief Executive Officer
Owns the call, the boardroom, and the narrative.
▣ Active player
CFO
Chief Financial Officer
Holds the chequebook and the regulator’s ear.
▣ Active player
CLO
Chief Legal Officer
Stewards privilege, disclosure and litigation risk.
▣ Active player
CMO
Chief Marketing Officer
Owns customer voice and brand posture under fire.
▣ Active player
CIO
Chief Information Officer
Restoration, prioritisation, and the platform’s future.
▣ Active player
CISO
Chief Information Security Officer
Containment, forensics, and the cost of being right.
▣ Active player
PRO
Public Relations Officer
Drafts the words the company will be judged by.
▣ Active player
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Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
V · Players & Cast (continued)
Scenario · v1.0
BBB-26-4EL

Red Team — Adversaries NPC · 5

DOMI
Dominic Harker — The Wire, Investigative Technology Correspondent
Harker has been working on a long-form piece about data security failures at major industry events for six months. He already has a source inside a gold-tier sponsor and is aware of the API anomaly before the organiser has made any public statement. He will call the PRO at 09:30 Mon W1 seeking comment and will file with or without a response. His angle is the hypocrisy of a cybersecurity event being the source of a major breach.
◇ Facilitator-voiced
RASH
Rashida Osei — Apex Litigation Partners, Class Action Lead
Osei is the solicitor leading the 312-delegate class action, backed by a professional litigation funder. She is media-friendly and will grant interviews to financial and legal press throughout the proceedings. Her strategy is to maximise claimant numbers before the 14-day response window expires, and she is actively soliciting additional affected delegates via LinkedIn and the event's official attendee community forum.
◇ Facilitator-voiced
THRE
Threat Actor: 'GoldList' — Organised Crime Affiliate
GoldList is the criminal group that exfiltrated the EventForge data, coordinated the burglary operation, and launched the phishing campaign. They are a financially motivated Eastern European affiliate group with no ideological agenda. After the first domain takedown, GoldList registers a second phishing domain within four hours and begins selling the full 19,400-record dataset on a dark web forum for £12,000, increasing the pool of threat actors with access to the delegate data.
◇ Facilitator-voiced
MARC
Marcus Veil — Activist Investor, InfoNoSecurity Europe Parent Group
Veil holds a 9.4% stake in the parent group that owns InfoNoSecurity Europe and two other B2B event brands. He sends an open letter to the board on Wed W1 demanding the immediate resignation of the CEO and an independent board investigation into the cybersecurity posture of all group events. He circulates the letter to five other institutional shareholders and posts it on LinkedIn, where it gains significant traction in the investor community.
◇ Facilitator-voiced
JENN
Jennifer Chu — CISO Forum Community Manager
Chu moderates the largest UK CISO peer forum on Slack, with 2,200 members — many of whom are Infosecurity Europe regulars. She creates a dedicated incident thread within hours of the first press report, collating complaints from affected delegates, sharing phishing indicators of compromise, and calling for a boycott of the 2027 event unless InfoNoSecurity Europe publishes a full independent review. Her forum thread becomes the primary information source for the security community and is cited by multiple journalists.
◇ Facilitator-voiced
Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
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Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
V · Players & Cast (continued)
Scenario · v1.0
BBB-26-4EL

Support Team — External Advisors Players · 4

EXTE
External Legal Counsel (KC)
Provides specialist legal advice on regulatory obligations, litigation risk, and privilege.
▣ Active player
MSSP
MSSP Cybersecurity Expert
Managed security service provider expert supporting technical investigation and containment.
▣ Active player
PR
PR Agency Crisis Management Expert
External crisis communications specialist managing media strategy and public messaging.
▣ Active player
RETA
Retained Advocate (Trusted Voice)
Trusted third-party spokesperson who can speak credibly on the organisation's behalf.
▣ Active player
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Badges, Burglars & Breaches: The Infosecurity Europe 2026 Incident
VI · How to Play
Scenario · v1.0
BBB-26-4EL
§ VI — How to Play

Run this scenario live

This document is the pre-read. The live exercise — timeline events, decision prompts, scoring and debrief — is run inside IncidentResponse.App. Follow the steps below to take the room from this brief into a facilitated session.

Open IncidentResponse.App

From any browser, go to IncidentResponse.App and sign in as the facilitator. You do not need to install anything — the session runs in the browser for everyone in the room.

Load the scenario

From the home screen, choose one of the two paths below depending on whether you already have a saved scenario file:

▣ Upload a saved scenario and go directly to scenario preparation — if you already hold the matching scenario XLSX file (the companion to this brief). Drop it into the uploader and the platform will reconstruct the world, cast and acts described here.

◇ Create a whole new scenario — if you do not have an XLSX. The guided builder will walk you through subject organisation, sector, acts, tensions and players, and produce a fresh scenario you can save and re-run later.

Prepare the room

Assign Blue Team and Support roles from the cast page. Use the host control screen to drive the scenario and project the big screen view on a large screen in the room or as a shared screen if playing via Zoom; players engage using their own unique player links on their own devices. Confirm timeboxing and the house rules before you release the first inject.

Run all three acts & debrief

Move through Build-Up, Contagion and Resolution at the pace of the room. The platform releases timeline events and decision prompts in order, captures each call, and produces a structured debrief pack at the end of the session.

After each act, a tutorial session runs in-app — combining short quizzes, training videos and slides — to consolidate the learning before the next act begins.

End of pre-read

“Bring this brief into the room, open the app, and let the scenario do the work. The rest belongs to the people around the table.”