DHS Publishes Report on Operation Cyberstorm

uniquebydegrees writes "InfoWorld reports that the Department of Homeland Security has released the findings of Operation Cyber Storm, a large-scale simulation of combined cyber-physical attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure. From the article: 'According to DHS, "observers noted that players had difficulty ascertaining what organizations and whom within those organizations to contact when there was no previously established relationship or pre-determined plans for response coordination and risk assessments/mitigation. There was a general recognition of the difficulties organizations faced when attempting to establish trust with unfamiliar organizations during time of crisis."'"

Comments

Sounds Interesting

[susano_otter]

At least according to the blurb, it sounds like the organizations involved will probably be working on ways to communicate with each other better in times of crisis, probably by developing trust relationships ahead of time.

Assuming that's the case, it's exactly the kind of improvements we should expect to see from government agencies: identifying weaknesses, and working to eliminate them.

So, kudos to DHS, and may they successfully apply the lessons learned from this exercise.

Re:Sounds Interesting

[susano_otter]

Actually, I think there's a lot of merit to the philosophy of "ineffective government". And it's definitely the case that the system of government we signed up for was designed to be as ineffective as possible without being completely useless.

However, in so far as we have government at all, I would prefer that it was able to act effectively in times of crisis.

I mean, think how much better off we'd be if FEMA, the State of Louisiana, and the City of New Orleans had thought to work out trust relationships and clear contingency plans and handoff of responsibilities, prior to the arrival of a giant fucking hurricane, yeah?

Besides, America has probably the most un-secret "secret police" of any nation in the world (unprovable conspiracy theories aside).

Also, the article isn't about the "secret police", but about the woefully feeble capabilities of government infrastructure agencies in general, to survive and recover from "cyber" attacks. You might want to save your "secret police" objections for an article about actual "secret police".

Parsing error. Does not compute.

[Kesch]

FTFA:

As DHS points out, just by carrying off such a large scale private-public and multinational exercise creates allows the government to test policies, procedures and communications should an actual attack occur.

This, combined with the submitter's bad line:

a large-scale simulation of combined cyber-physical attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure

Honestly, what's with all hyphenated oxymorons? Normally I'm not a Grammar Nazi, but it feels like the left-right side of my grammar center just got a swift kick in the nuts.

Finally, I found it funny that at the bottom of TFA they had links such as "Digg this!"
However, they also had a "Slashdot this!"

To which I reply. "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means."