GridEx VII Presents Numerous Challenges to Staff and Participants

On Nov. 14 and 15, MEAG Power participated in GridEx VII, the seventh biennial grid security and resilience exercise, hosted by NERC’​s Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC). GridEx provided a forum to practice response and recovery from cyber and physical security threats and incidents, both across the industry and internal to MEAG Power.

The largest grid security exercise in North America, GridEx VII saw more than 250 organizations take part. Security professionals played simultaneously in a complex and challenging scenario while adapting the exercise to meet their specific organizational needs. This year’s scenario reflected real-world cyber and physical threats and was designed to stress-test crisis response and recovery plans.

MEAG Power has participated in all seven iterations of GridEx – each time bringing in more employees across various departments to more closely approximate a real-world experience. This year, 26 MEAG Power employees from four departments participated, including five executives in differing roles. And, for the first time, two Participants were part of the exercise, adding another level of realism.

For the two days of GridEx, the MEAG Power Board room becomes a command center, with clusters of desks and computers arrayed around the room, bringing together specific groups and departments to help strategize and coordinate responses to the various “injects” – the specific, detailed cyber and/or physical security incidents happening across the state, the country and within MEAG Power.

Each cluster works both together and independently, based on each staff member’s role in the organization, to respond in kind to the various scenarios put forth.

At the close of the exercise, MEAG Power holds a debrief session to discuss the lessons learned in order to help improve processes and incident responses going forward.

NERC and the E-ISAC apply the overall outcomes and lessons learned from GridEx exercises to help improve the security of the North American grid. The GridEx Lessons Learned Reports from previous exercises are available under the “GridEx Public Reports” section on NERC’s website.​

The E-ISAC will develop the report on GridEx VII with input from all participants scheduled to be released by the end of the first quarter of 2024.