Regular exercises, such as tabletop exercises, are the most vital part of an incident response plan. These exercises prepare the incident response team for real-world scenarios and help identify weaknesses in the response plan. Having contacts and communications at hand is indeed useful, but without practice and validation through exercises, the plan's effectiveness is untested. Data backups are a critical part of recovery but do not directly relate to the incident response process itself. Incident response tools assist in the response but are only effective if the team knows how to use them in the context of a practiced plan.