Cyber Resilience – E-ISAC’s GridEx VII Provides Lessons for Water and Wastewater Utilities

The Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC), a WaterISAC partner, has released its GridEx VII Lessons Learned Report, its seventh biennial grid security and resilience exercise which took place in November 2023. The exercise is the largest of its kind in North America and included over 15,000 participants from approximately 250 North American organizations including water and wastewater utilities. The report highlights key areas of further action for the industry.

Although the target audience for GridEx is electric utilities, one goal of the E-ISAC’s GridEx Planning Team was to incorporate water/wastewater into exercise play and the GridEx VII scenario included opportunities for water/wastewater coordination. 7% of respondents to the After-Action Survey noted some level of coordination with water/wastewater facilities, although the report notes this level of coordination is lower than expected and respondents struggled to coordinate with external entities both within and outside the electric industry.

E-ISAC’s recommendations include valuable insights that are applicable to the water sector including:

• Recommendation 1: advancing coordination efforts between utilities and non-federal partners
• Recommendation 2: further refining communications and response in a hybrid work environment
• Recommendation 3: augmenting response planning to ensure comprehension of technical information across functional teams and external response partners.

GridEx VIII will take place on November 18-19, 2025. Registration for Lead Planners and Planners will open to E-ISAC members and partners in Q3 2024. For additional GridEx questions, contact the GridEx Planning Team at gr****@***ac.com. Access the full GridEx VII report here.