GridEx: How exercising response and recovery supports grid reliability
GridEx has grown to be the largest distributed play exercise of its kind in North America, serving as a critical benchmark that maximizes the ability of organizations to coordinate with neighboring utilities and reliability coordinators to effectively exercise and address grid reliability issues.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC) has hosted GridEx since 2011, its biennial grid security exercise designed to help prepare the electricity industry to respond to contemporary threats and security issues. Since then, GridEx has provided utilities and government stakeholders the opportunity to improve industry security and resilience by exercising their response and recovery plans and collaboration efforts during simulated cyber and physical attacks impacting the reliable operation of the North American power grid.
As the largest sector-specific functional exercise, GridEx offers complex attack scenarios designed to overwhelm even the most prepared utilities and participant organizations to push the limits of a potential real event or crisis. Next month, on November 16 and 17, 2021, the industry will once again come together to participate in GridEx VI.