Operation dark screen.Get your 'research' on.

[Matthew X]

Dark Screen's first phase, scheduled for September, will be a tabletop 
exercise in which a still-to-be-determined cyberattack will be played out 
and all participants will respond, said Gregory White, technical director 
of the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security at the University 
of Texas at San Antonio, which is leading the planning and execution of 
Dark Screen.
AIA has assumed a leadership role in bringing together various 
stakeholders, including representatives from the city, the county, the 
Army, the Air Force, the state attorney general's office, the FBI, the 
private sector and many others.
The second phase of Dark Screen will focus on applying the lessons learned 
from the tabletop exercise, and the third phase, to take place next May, 
will be a live exercise using actual attempts to penetrate networks, White 
said. He added that the final phase is "greatly to be defined," but will 
involve "testing notification and alert chains."
"We can do it on paper, but by bringing everybody together at one time, we 
can see who is prepared to do that," White said. "What we do here is 
applicable across the nation."
John Pike, director of the nonprofit organization GlobalSecurity. org, said 
the exercise was a welcome break from tradition.
The usual all-talk-and-no-action stance on cyberattacks is "rather strange, 
given the number of emergency response exercises that are conducted to 
anticipate other problems, such as hazardous materials spills or nuclear 
accidents," he said. He added that actual exercises are needed to "rehearse 
response measures."
The Defense Department frequently conducts exercises in which it pays 
companies to penetrate their systems, but Dark Screen will "help identify 
the interdependencies and linkages between the different sectors," White said.
San Antonio officials plan to "review and modify" their infrastructure 
security measures based on the Dark Screen findings, said Mike Miller, the 
city's emergency management coordinator.
"We hope to identify quick fixes and implement those quickly, as well as 
look at long-term issues that will take more time and resources to 
implement," said Miller, who is also assistant chief of the city's fire 
department. "The most important thing that we hope to get out of the 
exercise is securing San Antonio's infrastructure to maintain all aspects 
of the quality of life for our community. We also will share our 
experiences with other communities to help them be better prepared."
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/0722/tec-drill-07-22-02.asp