The ESRMO operates the North Carolina Information Sharing and Analysis Center, NC-ISAC, in order to raise awareness of cyber threats and improve cyber incident response. It leads an initiative to increase awareness of cyber security issues in both state and local government within North Carolina by maintaining statewide e-mail lists and using them to forward timely warnings and alerts from the Multi-State ISAC and provides yearly incident response training to state agency information security personnel. Computer forensic examination services assist agencies and the State Bureau of Investigation with criminal cases and examines computers involved with state personnel misusing state owned computers. ITS and Emergency Management are participating in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) national cyber exercise designated “Cyber Storm II” which will examine the capabilities of participating organizations to prepare for, protect from, and respond to the effects of cyber attacks. The overall goal for the exercise is to examine the processes, procedures, tools, and organizations in response to a multi-sector coordinated attack through, and on, the global cyber infrastructure. Cyber Storm is the largest government sponsored cyber security exercise of its kind, incorporating state, local, federal, and international government, as well as private sector players.

North Carolina objectives:

• Test the ability of participating agencies to effectively communicate during the incident using established and unconventional means.
• Test the ability of players to maintain effective positive interactions and utilize their full skill sets in the most effective manner during the exercise.
• Test the ability of the players to activate the Emergency Operations Center and perform additional large scale IT disaster recovery efforts.

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