Results
The exercise was structured similar to a Tabletop Exercise and included educational elements as part of the scenario construct and facilitation. The interactive format included elements of non-scripted dialogue.
Scope - Exercise scope was five states, including 800 miles of international border, one of the top 25 ports in the US, key rail and highway routes, a significant amount of power generation and transmission, high volumes of food production and hundreds of thousands of businesses, including home offices and key assets of several Fortune 100 companies.
Organizations - More than 600 critical infrastructure representatives (public and private) registered for the exercise (240 in-person and 400 for the live web stream). Banking was most strongly represented with 18% of participants, followed by Information Technology (13%), Agriculture (11%), Emergency Services (10%) and Health Care (8%). The remaining participation came from Food, Water, Government, Defense Industrial Base, Energy, Transportation, Chemical Industry and Hazardous Materials, Manufacturing and Postal and Shipping.
Participants - This group was comprised of leaders (78%) and senior leaders (27%) in their organizations. Participants were professionals in business continuity (29%), information security (17%), physical security and law enforcement (10%), emergency management, risk management (7%), and others who represent companies, non-profit organizations or government agencies who fulfill key roles in their organization during emergencies and disasters.
Response Capability - Most of the organizations conduct business or support multiple states (71%) and several (39%) support 4 or all 5. 80% of them have or are developing crisis or incident management structures and teams and 80% of the participants in the exercise fulfill roles on those teams.
Preparing for the Future – At the close of the exercise, participants expressed a strong commitment to continue the efforts that day (94%). Most (66%) specifically responded that they are more likely now to connect with their state fusion center and/or emergency operations center. There was also strong consensus about tangible tools to improve resilience, specifically access to a secure place to share information and direct briefings by public officials during emergencies.
