On 16 February 2026, ENISA published “The ENISA Cybersecurity Exercise Methodology”—a practical, end-to-end framework for planning, running, and evaluating cybersecurity exercises, paired with a support toolkit of templates and guiding materials to help teams execute consistently.
If you’re accountable for uptime, customer trust, and regulatory exposure, exercises are one of the fastest ways to turn “we have a plan” into “we can execute under pressure.” ENISA positions exercises as a structured way to test and strengthen people, process, and technology—and to translate lessons learned into an action plan.
The methodology is designed to ensure the right stakeholders are involved at the right time, and that exercises produce usable outcomes rather than one-off events. For product teams, the structure of the methodology is helpful because it can map to existing rhythms (quarterly planning, incident response playbooks, vendor reviews, release readiness) while keeping exercises outcome-focused.
The publication situates exercises within the broader European compliance landscape—supporting compliance with major frameworks and obligations that many organizations are subject to (e.g., NIS2, DORA, GDPR, and others). That makes it easier to justify investment to leadership: exercises become evidence of governance and operational readiness, not just “security training.”
Read the official press-release here and access the full methodology here.