What is a Microsimulation?

A short, focused exercise that puts teams in a realistic scenario to practice decisions, strengthen response, and capture measurable evidence of resilience.

Do Microsimulations replace Tabletop Exercises?

No - they make tabletops sharper. Continuous Microsimulation practice keeps skills current between set-piece exercises and shows exactly where capability is thin, so when you do run a tabletop, it's addressing real gaps instead of starting cold.

What is Capability Intelligence?

Capability Intelligence is the continuous measurement of how well people, processes, and technology perform in critical events or change. It gives leaders a real-time view of readiness - not as a checklist, but as living intelligence that evolves with the organization.

Who are Microsimulations for?

Individual team members, team cohorts, and cross-functional business units. From executives, boards, risk and cyber teams to operations and third parties. Run single-player practice or multiplayer team sessions.

How long does a Microsimulation take?

Most single-player simulations take 3-5 minutes. Multiplayer and digital tabletops typically run 30-90 minutes.

How do Microsimulations support regulatory and assurance requirements?

Microsimulations continuously test and document resilience capability - producing auditable data aligned with frameworks such as DORA, Operational Resilience, NIST, ISO 22301, APRA CPS 230, FFIEC, and SEC disclosure expectations. They transform "we think we're ready" into measurable proof.

FRONTIER AI RISK IN FINANCIAL SERVICES

Is your resilience keeping pace with your AI?

What happens when AI agents supporting critical financial services become unavailable? Explore what financial-services leaders revealed about their readiness, response priorities, and recovery assumptions in iluminr’s Agent Down Microsimulation.

Download the report Run the scenario

Cover of The State of Resilience in Agentic AI Adoption report by iluminr

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Explore the findings and what they mean for your organization’s AI resilience.

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3 CLEAR INSIGHTS

The findings are eye opening.

Confidence in maintaining minimum service levels in a critical service, is low.

Only 16% of resilience professionals could demonstrate confidence in maintaining minimum service levels in critical service delivery after the loss of an agentic AI vendor.

People strategies are the contingency strategy of choice after AI fails.

In attempt to recover critical services, people largely turned to people, as the most reliable option of contingency. This elevates the criticality of workforce considerations in resilience alongside AI deployment.

Design for resilience, not recovery.

Maintaining a resilient delivery of critical services to customers, came down to decisions made at time of AI deployment, not at the time of the incident.

2 VIDEO UPDATES · 7 DECISION POINTS

Where your peers agreed, and where they split.

DECISIONS 1 TO 2 · STAKEHOLDERS

“Who else would you engage for the response? Are these stakeholders formally documented?”

16%

named HR, in a scenario defined by a 70% workforce cut. Only 1 named sanctions screening.

DECISION 3 · IMPACTS

“What are the key impacts you would be raising with the team to assess and prioritize?”

58%

raised customer impacts first. Only 6% raised impact tolerances.

DECISION 4 · IMPACT THRESHOLDS

“With the agent running at 300% throughput, will we breach impact thresholds faster?”

77%

anticipated breaching impact tolerances sooner after losing the agent.

DECISION 5 · RECOVERY STRATEGY

“Three key response strategies are emerging for consideration. Which of these would you suggest receives the highest priority?”

Alternate strategy

32%

BPO

29%

Alternate AI

26%

Rehire

13%

No single strategy emerged. 39% of participants selected workforce solutions to recover.

DECISION 6 · CONFIDENCE

“How confident are you that minimum service levels can be maintained within impact thresholds?”

16%

were confident of maintaining minimum service levels. None were very confident.

DECISION 7 · PRIORITY ACTION

“What is the one action that you believe should be prioritized to increase confidence in maintaining minimum service levels for this scenario?”

Process

26%

People

23%

Vendor

23%

Governance

19%

Communication

10%

No single action dominated. Every response is listed in the report appendix.

Cohort Readiness

Preparedness to act for real

Moderate

Solid readiness, with a few soft spots.

Participant Confidence

How sure people were

Moderate

Generally confident, with some doubt.

Alignment Level

Agreement on key decisions

Moderate

Good alignment on the core decisions.

Critical Blind Spots

Missing essential steps

Elevated

Several essential steps were missed.

WHAT’S INSIDE

The full readout, decision by decision.

✓

Every decision point, cohort split and the reasoning behind it

✓

Findings mapped to APRA, FCA, OSFI and MAS expectations

✓

Capability Intelligence insights and prioritized actions

✓

5 priorities for organizations adopting agentic AI

✓

All participant responses, grouped by theme

Agent Down report cover and inside spreads

“

The time to have an alternate solution was long before the crisis. The idea that you could contract with another firm quickly enough is wrong.

Agent Down participant

Practitioners from organizations across 6 countries, each answering in a personal capacity.

INSIDE AGENT DOWN

The same scenario, run with your own teams.

Run the scenario

The video update

Video update in the Agent Down Microsimulation player

Each participant hears the same briefing and decides alone.

The decision

Agent Down decision point with free-text reasoning

Every decision point records the choice, the rationale and how confident the participant felt.

The insight

Capability Intelligence insights and prioritized actions

See where your teams converge, where they split, and what to strengthen next.

View the full report.

Explore the findings and what they mean for your organization’s AI resilience.

Download the report Run the scenario

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iluminr makes capability visible, repeatable, and real. Our platform connects Microsimulations and full-scale exercises into a living system of practice - generating the capability intelligence that shows where resilience holds, where it's thin, and where to invest next.

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