Building a Production Quality, NIST SP 800 53 Rev. 5 Aligned Tabletop Exercise Platform in Approximately Four Hours of Active Work
Executive Summary
I built a production-ready cybersecurity tabletop exercise platform in approximately four hours of active work spread across two days. The application includes a live multiplayer exercise engine, AI-generated scenarios, three AI provider paths, role-based access control, audit logging, Docker deployment, an operational security dashboard, and a 13-document NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5-aligned security package. The completed codebase reached 15,628 lines across the frontend, backend, service layer, authentication functions, database models, reporting capabilities, and administrative interfaces.
This case study explains how the platform was built, how the work was divided between human direction and AI-generated implementation, and how the development process changed as a result. My role focused on defining requirements, setting the architecture, testing the running system, identifying defects, validating security decisions, and determining whether the implementation met the intended result. The AI handled most of the implementation work across the codebase.
The paper also examines how security, documentation, and control visibility can be developed alongside the application instead of being added after the build is complete. The platform was created with a defined system boundary, supporting security artifacts, operational security monitoring, and authorization documentation aligned to the actual implementation.
The larger point is how much the economics and speed of internal application development have changed. A system that would normally require months of work and hundreds of developer hours was built, deployed, secured, and documented in a matter of hours. The full case study describes the workflow, the results, and the changes organizations need to make to take advantage of AI-assisted development.
Publishing Links
Presentation: https://atarc.org/project/deck-cyber-tabletop-a-case-study-in-ai-assisted-development-and-rapid-system-delivery/