Federal officials detail response to August blackout

As the East Coast braced for a high-powered hurricane, House lawmakers on Wednesday heard from federal critical infrastructure experts on what happened during the August power outage in parts of the United States and Canada.

Robert Liscouski, the Homeland Security Department's assistant secretary for infrastructure protection, described how his directorate responded to the blackout, its first major event of that type during a hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittees on Cybersecurity, Science, and Research & Development, and Infrastructure and Border Security. Liscouski, who has testified on Capitol Hill three times in three days, is in the information analysis and infrastructure protection directorate.

Meanwhile, the department outlined its preparations for Hurricane Isabel's landfall, which is expected Thursday, but did not specify communications measures. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Coast Guard have deployed communications and medical teams along the mid-Atlantic coast, and the department suggested that citizens "develop a family communication plan."

During the blackout, Liscouski said, the infrastructure coordination division focused on the outage itself and the impact on infrastructures, while the department's cyber division "looked into the possibility that the blackout might have been caused by a cyber attack." The protective security division assessed emerging vulnerabilities caused by the blackout to identify "what's next" scenarios, he said in prepared remarks.

Officials analyzed previous and current intelligence traffic and coordinated with the intelligence community and law enforcement to see if the cause was "attributed to a bad actor," he said. And the Homeland Security Operations Center coordinated communications between state and local "first responders" to emergencies and the federal government.

Liscouski said the ability to communicate with the infrastructure sectors was in place, though no information on threats was sent. Homeland Security Department officials coordinated with the energy, telecommunications, finance, health and transportation sectors.

Homeland Security Department officials are still investigating whether the blackout might have been computer related, though there is no evidence of a criminal or terrorist cyberattack, he said.

There were numerous cyber connections among facilities' technology infrastructures and those of companies that were unaffected, he said. But there is a wide range in age and sophistication of the technologies on which the systems depend. Industry is in the process of trying to reduce vulnerabilities and improve cybersecurity, he said.

Robert Dacey, director of information security issues at the General Accounting Office (GAO), said more improvements are necessary. GAO recommended developing a national plan to facilitate information sharing on critical infrastructure protection and developing "productive" information-sharing relationships among governments and the private sector. It also called for incentives for non-federal entities to increase information sharing with the federal government.

Denise Swink, acting director of the Office of Energy Assurance, said that during the blackout, the Energy Department immediately updated its Web site with a special section and created an impromptu email list for interested media.

Col. Michael McDaniel, Michigan's assistant adjutant general for homeland security, testified that while state-federal communication was "robust" during the crisis, it was limited to telephone or fax. He suggested that a backup system be installed, such as FEMA's wireless system, which is not dependent on commercial lines.