Cyber Storm VI: National Cyber Exercise

The Cyber Storm exercise series is the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) national, biennial distributed exercise entirely focused on cyber incident response. Mandated by Congress, these exercises are part of the Department’s ongoing efforts to assess and strengthen cyber preparedness, examine incident response processes, and enhance information sharing among federal, state, international, and private sector partners. Each Cyber Storm event builds on lessons learned from previous exercises and real world incidents, ensuring that participants address relevant and timely challenges.

Cyber Storm exercises give the cyber incident response community a safe venue to coordinate and practice plans, response mechanisms and recovery tasks, as well as to build and maintain relationships. Most importantly, the exercises provide the community with the opportunity to identify strengths and areas for improvement, incorporating those lessons into operations to help reduce cyber risks to the nation.

The high-level objectives of Cyber Storm VI include:

• Exercise the coordination mechanisms and evaluate the effectiveness of the National Cyber Incident Response Plan (NCIRP) in guiding response.
• Assess information sharing to include thresholds, paths, timeliness, usefulness of information shared, and barriers to sharing both internally and externally within the cyber incident response community.
• Continue to examine the role, functions, and capabilities of DHS as the Department coordinates with impacted entities during a cyber event.
• Provide a forum for exercise participants to exercise, evaluate, and improve the processes, procedures, interactions, and information sharing mechanisms within their organization or community of interest

Cyber Storm VI is scheduled for Spring 2018. The exercise will focus on the critical manufacturing and transportation sectors, with participation from the information technology and communications sectors; law enforcement, defense, and intelligence agencies; state, local, and territorial governments; and international partners. For more information, email cyberstorm@hq.dhs.gov.

To review the final reports from previous Cyber Storm exercises, visit https://www.dhs.gov/publication/cyber-storm-final-reports.