The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) conducted its second nation-wide grid security exercise, GridEx-II (http://stne.co/1j8XQF7),  on November 13 and 14 2013.   The exercise was intended to “validate the readiness of the Electricity Sub-sector to respond to a cyber incident, strengthen utilities’ crisis response functions, and provide input for internal security
program improvements.”      According to the NYTimes (http://stne.co/1hKLQ13) the training drill included computer viruses, physical bombings, active shooter scenarios, and computer ‘denial of service’ attacks – all of which was simulated with no real harm coming to our nation’s power lines.

From my own experience, I know that drills of this sort provide invaluable training for responders and emergency planners alike.   I look forward to reading the after-action report (click here for the after-action report from the 2011 drill http://stne.co/1hKMJ9Q).