The North American Electric Reliability Corporation on March 2 released a lessons learned report for GridEx VIII. The report is a detailed post-exercise review and analysis of NERC and the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center’s (E-ISAC) GridEx VIII, that took place in November 2025. 

The report provides recommendations that are intended to inform electric industry participants, critical infrastructure sector partners, and government partners of measures that they can take to improve the collective resilience and response to cyber and physical security events that may affect the North American electric grid. 

The report contains a summary of the recommendations and observations identified through Distributed Play and the Executive Tabletop. 

Executive Tabletop Recommendations 

A high-level summary of the recommendations from the Tabletop is as follows (recommendations are not listed in priority order): 

  • U.S. and Canadian defense installations should collaborate with applicable industry partners to build a common operating picture and collective understanding of the electric reliability requirements for defense critical infrastructure (DCI) and associated risks to DCEI
  • Reliability coordinators and the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council should coordinate to improve communication processes to ensure that coordination between these entities can be maintained in a large-scale emergency.
  • The E-ISAC, industry, and government partners should coordinate to add appropriate U.S. and Canadian government contacts to the ESCC Resilient Communications Directory.
  • Relevant government entities should continue to improve information-sharing efforts with industry to inform operational responses to exigent threats.
  • Industry and government should continue to champion frameworks and programs, such as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, the Energy Threat Analysis Center (ETAC), the Cybersecurity Risk Information Sharing Program (CRISP), and Lighthouse, which support information sharing processes and expand the knowledge and use of existing urgent threat exchange and analysis models.
  • U.S. and Canadian federal government partners should work with industry partners to identify legally accessible technology to address threats from unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and clarify available government support.
  • Industry leadership and government representatives should continue to discuss liability protections for utilities in the event of a government directive to modify operations or energy and resource allocation.
  • Industry leadership across all critical infrastructure sectors should identify interoperable communication systems and ensure redundancy

Distributed Play Recommendations

Industry Recommendations Recommendations

  • Continue coordinating with government and emergency management partners in exercise and response planning
  • Encourage further communications testing with an emphasis on contingency and emergency communications in alignment with the primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency (PACE) model
  • Practice coordination and communication between different internal functions

GridEx Recommendations

  • Continue expanding and developing GridEx participation options
  • Create an archive of GridEx materials for E-ISAC members to use throughout the year
  • Further integrate social media and public communications into GridEx
  • Develop additional guidance for coordinating with external partners
     

In addition to summarizing recommendations and observations identified through Distributed Play and the Executive Tabletop, the report provides information on the scenario, participation metrics, and improvements targeted for GridEx IX in 2027. 
 

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