The United States National Guard (USNG) recently conducted Exercise Cyber Shield 2017 at Camp Williams in Utah, which trained more than 800 Army personnel in various aspects of cyber protection, network defense, forensic analysis, cyber tactics, and defense procedures against hackers and cybercriminals.
The event brought together members from the Army National Guard, Air National Guard, Army Reserve, state and federal government officials, industry partners, and academics, providing a comprehensive training event to assess cybersecurity operations within USNG.
Each exercise was designed to support cyberspace operations to defend U.S. Department of Defense assets by conducting command readiness inspections and critical infrastructure vulnerability examinations.
“We integrate subject-matter experts from other Army Reserve and National Guard units to provide assessments, command and control, and embedded observers to ultimately provide the [participating] units with a take-home packet so they can conduct training when they get home,” Col. John Zierdt, of the 75th Training Command, which supported the command and control element, the training analyst cell, and the assessments cell, said.
Lt. Col. Henry Capello, who leads the Cyber Shield event, said the exercises give the National Guard the ability to practice its plans so that if a major event were to occur — such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — the department will understand the repercussions for cyberspace and infrastructure and won’t have to figure out how to react as the event is taking place.
“We have an opportunity here to get ahead of the threat,” Capello said.