From November 14 to 16, 2023, more than 1,000 participants from both the public and private sectors, representing over 170 financial institutions across more than 20 countries, participated in the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA)’s global Quantum Dawn VII exercise. The goal of the exercise was to simulate operational impacts on financial firms, critical third parties and the global financial ecosystem, improve crisis and incident management response and recovery plans, and strengthen global coordination and information-sharing mechanisms necessitated during significant operational outages such as a cyber incident.

In this after-action report, we look at the lessons learned from the Quantum Dawn VII exercise.