Today I want to bring a few things to your attention that aren’t big enough for their own article.
GridEx II
I have gotten email from folks who are concerned about GridEX II, which is taking place on November 13 & 14. They’re concerned about mass power outages. It seems there are some in the preparedness niche that are making GridEx to be something it really isn’t. According to the North American Electronic Reliability Corporation:
“The objectives of the NERC Grid Security Exercise (GridEx) series are to exercise the current readiness of participating Electricity Sub-sector entities to respond to a cyber incident and provide input for security program improvements to the bulk power system. GridEx is a biennial international grid security exercise that uses best practices and other contributions from the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
NERC conducted the first sector-wide grid security exercise, GridEx 2011, on November 16-17, 2011. The exercise was designed 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. The GridEx 2011 after-action report is below.”
As mentioned, they have done this before, in 2011. They are preforming a table top exercise, which is like “pretending” the grid has been hacked. They will gameplay how they will respond. There is no risk of the grid going down because of this. I think this is actually a great thing! It shows that they know there are vulnerabilities and that they are trying to figure out how they can and will fix those vulnerabilities.
If you want more details on GridEx II, you can read an overview here.
41 Camping Hacks That Are Borderline Genius
When used in this context, a “hack” is a very clever way to do something. Thanks to GK for sending me this link. There are some really good ideas here that some of us might want to incorporate into our plans.
A licensed distributor of Guardian Survival Gear has agreed to be a Preparedness Club Supporter and is offering a 10% discount to members of the Preparedness Club. Wrex believes that we need to be equipped to be our own first responders and wants to offer this discount so that we can be better prepared to do so! Thanks Wrex!!
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