What if hackers shut down the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel? A cyber drill runs today
What if hackers shut down the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel? That's the made-up scenario at Operation: Defend the North, a cyber crisis drill St. Clair College is hosting with siberX today, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the St. Clair College Centre for the Arts.
Topics: Public safetyRoads and transit
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A cyber crisis exercise built around the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel runs today in downtown Windsor.
Operation: Defend the North is hosted by St. Clair College and presented by siberX, a cybersecurity company. It runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at the St. Clair College Centre for the Arts, 201 Riverside Dr. W.
What happens
The centrepiece is a live tabletop exercise built around a fictional cyberattack involving the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel. Participants work through how organizations and emergency responders would handle a major cyber crisis, from spotting the attack to recovery.
The college says the Windsor exercise focuses on an attack on cross-border logistics, auto manufacturing and supply chains, with systems on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border affected at the same time.
Participants include business leaders, technology and cybersecurity specialists and emergency management professionals.
Why the tunnel
St. Clair College chief information officer Amar Singh told CBC News the tunnel is a hard scenario because so many agencies and jurisdictions are involved on both sides of the border, each with its own rules and emergency plans.
What it means for you
Organizers describe the exercise as practice: a way to find gaps in how agencies would respond before a real attack happens. Windsor News is not aware of any actual threat to the tunnel. This is a drill.
