Dark Screen's first phase, scheduled for September, will be a tabletop exercise in which a still-to-be-determined cyberattack will be played out and all participants will respond, said Gregory White, technical director of the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security at the University of Texas at San Antonio, which is leading the planning and execution of Dark Screen. AIA has assumed a leadership role in bringing together various stakeholders, including representatives from the city, the county, the Army, the Air Force, the state attorney general's office, the FBI, the private sector and many others. The second phase of Dark Screen will focus on applying the lessons learned from the tabletop exercise, and the third phase, to take place next May, will be a live exercise using actual attempts to penetrate networks, White said. He added that the final phase is "greatly to be defined," but will involve "testing notification and alert chains." "We can do it on paper, but by bringing everybody together at one time, we can see who is prepared to do that," White said. "What we do here is applicable across the nation." John Pike, director of the nonprofit organization GlobalSecurity. org, said the exercise was a welcome break from tradition. The usual all-talk-and-no-action stance on cyberattacks is "rather strange, given the number of emergency response exercises that are conducted to anticipate other problems, such as hazardous materials spills or nuclear accidents," he said. He added that actual exercises are needed to "rehearse response measures." The Defense Department frequently conducts exercises in which it pays companies to penetrate their systems, but Dark Screen will "help identify the interdependencies and linkages between the different sectors," White said. San Antonio officials plan to "review and modify" their infrastructure security measures based on the Dark Screen findings, said Mike Miller, the city's emergency management coordinator. "We hope to identify quick fixes and implement those quickly, as well as look at long-term issues that will take more time and resources to implement," said Miller, who is also assistant chief of the city's fire department. "The most important thing that we hope to get out of the exercise is securing San Antonio's infrastructure to maintain all aspects of the quality of life for our community. We also will share our experiences with other communities to help them be better prepared." http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/0722/tec-drill-07-22-02.asp