EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Rest assured, it was just a drill.
Around the hour of 10pm on Wednesday, April 24th, Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, enacted a power cut to simulate an infrastructure interruption caused by a cyber attack. The blackout was unannounced, and affected tens of thousands of individuals. When asked about what was happening, officials feigned ignorance and assured residents that they would try to “sort this out and get a clearer picture of what is going on.”
The army reportedly axed the power in order “to identify shortcomings in our infrastructure, operations and security.” Fort Bragg must remain mission capable under adverse circumstances. The operation occurred in conjunction with mandatory water restrictions.
The outage affected military activities, neighborhoods and businesses alike. Traffic signals were out, and a Facebook post issued a warning to drivers. The Womack Army Medical Center on the base rescheduled its morning clinical appointments due to the outage, although the Emergency Room and inpatient services continued to function.
“In today’s world, cyber-attacks are very likely. This exercise is exactly what we needed to do to identify our vulnerabilities and work to improve our security and deployment posture” the army announced in a statement.
Read Fort Bragg’s full briefing about the exercise on ABC News.
