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NATIONAL GUARD ON-THE-RECORD TELEPHONIC MEDIA ROUNDTABLE

JUNE 29, 2021

TOPIC SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS

Cyber Shield 2021  Army Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson, Chief, National Guard Bureau

 Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Neely, Adjutant General of 

Illinois and Master Cyber Space Officer.

 Mr. George Battistelli, Exercise Director and Chief of 

Information Technology Security, Compliance and Readiness 

Division, G-6, Army National Guard

 Army LTC Brad Rhodes, exercise Officer in Charge and 

Incoming Chief Information Officer for the 76th Operational 

Response Command, U.S. Army Reserve

 Army Chief Warrant Officer 3, Dionysus Griffith, Information 

Systems Technician, G-6 Cyber Security Response Force, 

North Carolina Army National Guard

 Army Sgt. Tucker Huff, Senior Host Analyst, 175th Cyber 

Protection Team, 91st Cyber Brigade, Kentucky National Guard

Introduction:

Army General Daniel R. Hokanson, Chief of the National Guard Bureau:

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to talk about the upcoming National 

Guard Cyber Shield 21 exercise. Cyber incidents are ongoing and substantial threat in 2021 

alone, America's power plants, food supply, water supply, health care, law enforcement and 

defense sectors have all come under attack. These cyber threats extend our adversaries reach 

across borders and time zones, it could have a devastating consequences. Just last week, 

Secretary Austin and General Milley testified about the need to add more cybersecurity resources 

to counter Russian cyber hostilities. That's why exercises like Cyber Shield are so important. The 

National Guard plays a critical role in the DOD's cyber enterprise. We've also emerged as a 

trusted and valuable resource in helping our local, state and federal partners defend and mitigate 

against cyber attacks. Today, there are nearly four-thousand National Guard cyber operators 

across 40 states during the last presidential election, more than 12 hundred guardsmen and 

women from 18 states provided IT support, vulnerability assessments, risk mitigation and 
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network monitoring. In addition, we've also seen National Guard cyber partnerships grow in 

many of our states. For many years, the state of Washington's National Guard has worked with 

public utility companies to identify gaps in their security. They also worked with the Washington 

Secretary of State's office to ensure the 2016 and 2020 general elections were secure. As another 

example, over the past two-years, Louisiana reported 90 attacks on each of their 64 parishes that 

required cyber support from the Louisiana National Guard. These are just two examples of real 

world events that benefited from lessons learned, at previous cyber shield exercises. In this cyber 

shield exercise, the National Guard cyber operators will train to Army and joining for standards, 

they will test their knowledge of network defenses, forensic analysis, reporting and mitigation 

and incident response. When our National Guard cyber warriors are called to deter, disrupt and 

defeat malicious cyber activity, we will be ready. Before I go, I'd like to introduce some of our 

guard's finest cyber operators, first Major General, Richard Neely, the Illinois Adjutant General, 

Head of Cyberspace officer. Mr. George Battistelli, the Cyber Shield Exercise director and the 

Army National Guard's chief of I.T. Security, Compliance and Readiness Division. The 

Colorado Army National Guard Lt Col Brad Rhodes, exercise officer in charge, and cyber 

operators Chief Warrant Officer 3, Dionysus Griffith of the North Carolina National Guard, and 

Sgt. Tucker Huff of the Kentucky National Guard. With that, I'll turn it over to Major General 

Rich Neely. 

Opening Statement:

Major General Richard Neely, Adjutant General of Illinois and Commander of the Illinois 

National Guard and a Master Cyber Space Officer:

Good morning and thank you all for joining us today. General Hokanson mentioned a few states 

that been attacked through cyberspace recently. Either state-sponsored or independent cyber 

criminals have attacked or attempted to attack critical infrastructure in every state. 

If I look at my own state of Illinois, just this month the St. Clair County government was 

attacked by ransomware. In April, the Illinois Attorney General’s computer networks were 

attacked. And, as you all know, the Illinois Board of Election’s networks were hacked in 2016 

and the Illinois National Guard has been working with the Board of Elections in cyber defense 

since. You may not be aware of most of these event, but you are all aware of the very significant 

cyberattacks on this countries critical infrastructure that occurred in the last 60 days. The first 

was the Colonial Pipeline attack that shutdown 45% of the East Coast fuel supply in May. The 

second attack was on JBS, which supplies 1/5th of our country’s meat. Both attacks threaten our 

countries wellbeing. Not all attacks require a National Guard response, but as with other 

domestic emergencies, it is incumbent on the National Guard to be ready in the event that 
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civilian resources are exhausted. As with other emergencies, it is best not to be trading business 

cards in the middle of a crises. It is all about planning and training together. 

Cyber Shield is special because it integrates all levels of government and utilities, high-tech 

industry, law enforcement and other partners. It has been described as kind of like a pick-up 

basketball game where the teams choose their best players, both in the military and outside the 

military, and brings them along. These military cyber warriors have a significant advantage over 

their active duty counterparts, as they bring their civilian acquired skills and experience, in 

addition to their military cyber training. This year’s exercise has 14 State Governments, plus 

Guam involved. It has municipal and county governments, including the City of Tacoma, 

Washington. It has the Southern Company, the 2nd largest energy utility in the United States. It 

has the SouthWest Water Company, which operates in six different states. It has The Citadel and 

Cal Polytech, Microsoft and Dell are involved. While the SANS Institute will be providing

training. For the first time ever, 15 of the National Guard’s State Partnership countries will get a 

glimpse into how we train in cyber defensive operations. This includes the Illinois National 

Guard’s partner, Poland. All these organizations did not participate because Mr. Battistelli or Lt. 

Col. Rhodes – or even General Hokanson - called them up. They came to the table because some 

of the cyber warriors from the individual states asked them to participate. That gets to the 

strength of the National Guard as a community-based organization – how we can be the 

connective tissue between the Department of Defense and, for example, Pleasant Prairie, 

Wisconsin. This village of about 20,000 people on the Wisconsin/Illinois border doesn’t 

participate in a lot of military exercises, but a representative from this community is participating 

in Cyber Shield. That happened through local connections between that state’s cyber response 

team and their National Guard cyber warriors, who connected a cyber security expert that works 

for the village with this national-level military exercise.

In some cases, some of our National Guard cyber warriors work for the organization that is now 

participating. In the other cases, we are taking advantage of the relationships we’ve built in states 

and communities, like Pleasant Prairie. It’s said that no problems are solved top down – that the 

best solutions come from those with hands on and then are implemented across organizations. 

That is very true of Cyber Shield. The exercise started several years ago with a few cyber 

warriors getting together to try and fill in some training gaps and it has evolved into the largest 

unclassified cyber training exercise in the military, with more than 750 participants. 

And it continues to evolve each year as the threat evolves. 

With that, I’ll turn it back to Mr. Wayne Hall, and again, thank you for joining us today. 

Wayne Hall [00:10:56] Thank you, sir. We'll move on to Mr. Botticelli, 

who is the exercise director, sir. 
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George Battistelli [00:11:04] Yeah, good morning, everybody, thank you for for 

joining us. My name is George Battistini. This is 

my third cyber shield as the exercise director. I've 

also run the defense of cyber operations for the 

Army National Guard at the Enterprise. So we 

inspect all the traffic at the point of entry in the 

point of demarcation for all the 54 states and 

territories. And we have the Defense of Cyber 

Operations mission. One of the unique things that I 

got to do this year is, as I'm sure everyone is aware 

of the solar winds supply chain attack that 

happened. So I was the incident commander and the 

task force lead for the Army National Guard 

response to the solar winds incident. And one of the 

things that that helped us do is we took those 

lessons learned and injected some realism into 

cyber shield this year. So the exercise has has 

continued to evolve based on what is going on in 

the in the public sector, things that you see in the 

news. And we continue to make sure that we're 

evolving and training our defense cyber operation 

elements so that they're able to respond, whether it 

be on a state active duty mission or a mission on the 

Department of Defense Information Network, that 

they have the same tool sets, that they have 

standardized training. And that's really the goodness 

of cyber shield because the states get to coordinate, 

communicate, meet and greet with their their fellow 

DCEOs, defensive cyber operation elements, 

incident responders from the other states. They get 

to continue to build that network. Last year, we 

were a little bit handicapped by the covid-19 

pandemic because we had to go fully virtual. We 

pivoted three different times and then we figured 

out that we could do a virtual exercise. Now, with 

the virtual exercise, you do lose some of that 

goodness of the in-person. But we're starting to now 
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get better from from covid. People are getting 

vaccinated. We're starting to get back together this 

year. We have a hybrid event. We look forward to 

next year being a fully in-person event. But I think 

we have a really good exercise plan. We're getting 

after some significant mission, essential tasks. And 

I really appreciate everyone being here today. And I 

look forward to answer any questions you might 

have about the exercise or our Solar Winds incident 

response. And with that, I'll pass it over to 

Lieutenant Colonel Brad Rhodes, the OIC for Cyber 

Shield 21. 

Lt Col Rhodes [00:13:23] Awesome, thanks, George. Good morning, 

everyone. It's nice to be here and see all of all of 

you today. So Cyber Shield is an amazing exercise. 

I've been in the Colorado Guard in the Army for 

about twenty four years. I'm a cyber warfare officer, 

which makes it interesting. And, you know, 

multiple combat deployments, the whole nine yards. 

It is probably the most fun that I have had in the 

military is the opportunity to lead Cyber Shield. 

Cyber Shield brings together a volunteer staff of 50 

plus folks from across the fifty four states and 

territories. Truly a national effort to put this 

exercise together. They spend time outside of the 

normal drills, normal annual training that we do.

They spend a lot of their own time developing the 

construct of the scenario that we're going to deliver 

this year. Really, really amazing, amazing stuff. 

Cyber Shield is about training as we fight. And so 

that's an old adage in the military. If you don't train 

as you fight, you don't know how you're going to 

actually perform in a fight. And so what we do at 

Cyber Shield that is really unique is we bring an 

absolutely world class opposing force. So a red 

team that is actually actively engaging our blue 
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teams on the persistent cyber training environment. 

That's our record. That's the program of record of 

range for the for the military that we're operating on 

this year. Obviously, as George mentioned, we like 

to bring in the realism, we call it sort of ripped from 

the headlines when we designed this exercise. We 

look at what's happening out there right now in 

cyberspace, in the world, and we say, what can we 

bring to the exercise that will get our soldiers, 

airmen, the joint forces that participate in cyber 

shield every year and our mission partners? That's 

really important. How do we give them a realistic 

event that helps them to understand what's directly 

in front of them right now? So Cyber Shield 

provides that touching on the fact that cyber shield 

is unclassified. We could not bring the large amount 

of mission partners from across state, local, local 

tribal, territorial governments, academia, industry 

partners, critical infrastructure providers. As Major 

General Neely mentioned, we couldn't do that if this 

exercise is not unclassified. So that gives us a huge 

advantage to be able to interact with those partners 

and help in terms of getting their understanding and 

building those relationships. What I like to say is 

left of boom, left of that incident, because you don't 

want to be trying to figure out who's in the room 

left of incident back in 2018, I was part of the 

Colorado Department of Transportation incident 

response where we addressed the Sam Sam 

ransomware attack on that organization. And 

because of the exercises that we did in the guard 

with those mission, with many of those mission 

partners that were in the room with this from the 

Office of Information Technology in Colorado to 

Sedot to some of the academic partners that help 

with that response. We knew everybody walking in 

the door. And so that instant trust there that you 
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engender with being a guardsman, living and 

working in the local community, in many cases 

working for the organizations that we were helping, 

really helped us to get a feel for that response and to 

address those issues faster than if we had been 

walking into a cold. So really great opportunity 

there at Cyber Shield. And last I'll touch on before I 

pass it back over to Wayne is the integration of the 

state partner programs countries? That is amazing. 

We're doing that for the first time this year at kind 

of a good scale. We're doing it virtually, which is 

going to be interesting, but are as part of the support 

that we do from the DOD perspective to our foreign 

partners and our foreign allies, this is absolutely 

essential. Our foreign partners and allies are facing 

the exact same threats that we see in the United 

States. And in some cases, they're much closer to 

the threats than we are. And so helping them to 

understand how to build one of these training events 

and how to actually train and interact with their own 

mission partners is really essential to what we're 

doing here at Cyber Shield. So, Wayne, I'll pass it 

back over to you. 

Wayne Hall [00:17:37] Thank you very much for that great introduction. 

I'm going to pass it on to Chief Warrant Officer 3 

Dionysus Griffith. Hope I didn't mess it up. Chief, 

are you there? 

Lt Col Rhodes [00:17:59] I think he might have dropped off I'll ping him. 

Wayne Hall [00:18:01] OK, so I will pass on to Sergeant Tucker Huff.

Sgt Tucker Huff [00:18:09] Thank you, Mr. Hall. Good morning, everyone. I 

am Sergeant Tucker Huff of the Kentucky Army 

National Guard. I've been a guard member for 

roughly eight years. I am the senior host analyst for 
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the 175 cyber protection team and the 91st Cyber 

Brigade. And I'll pass it back to you, Mr. Hall. 

Wayne Hall [00:18:26] OK, thank you. We'll catch up. Chief Warrant 

Officer Griffith, if he is able to rejoin us. All right. 

To the members of the media joined to thank you 

for joining us today. I'd like to ask that all members 

of the media, when you when you ask a question, 

please state your name affiliation for clarity for the 

group. Be respectful, being respectful of time. We 

will start off with allowing reporters to ask a 

question and a follow up. If we have more time, 

we'll circle back. I will go through the list as best I 

can. If you have a question I haven't called on you, 

please feel free to put a note in the chatroom. So 

you have a question. And if you were not able to 

answer a question on the round table, we'll do our 

best to try to get back to you with an answer. With 

that, I'd like to start with Courtney Kube from NBC. 

Are you with us? And you have a question? 

Courtney Kube NBC [00:19:17] I am here. Thank you. I'm sorry. I think it was the 

maybe the second person I dialed in a minute or two 

late who was involved in the solar WINPAC. Is it 

Mr. Mr. Battistelli? Yes, that is. Sorry. I'm 

wondering if you could just tell us a little bit more 

about your involvement in that. And and 

specifically, I'm interested in how you said that 

you're trying to take some real world examples like 

how are you applying what you saw and learned 

from solar winds to this exercise and then to larger 

cybersecurity? 

George Battistelli [00:19:54] Yeah, absolutely, I can take that one, Courtney. So I 

think what you were asking for is the lessons 

learned that we got from the solar winds 

compromise, right. So well-known in the news that 
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it was a supply chain compromise where a certain 

version of the software was compromised. But one 

of the things that we use that for specifically as we 

relate to the cyber shield exercise, is that it helps us 

in our training when we have one of these events. 

Right. So you start to understand where you have 

gaps in your data analysis. You start to understand 

where you have gaps in your tool sets. Right. So as 

we send our teams on what happens if they're 

unable to to see the health of the network, when 

they get on the network, they have to have 

secondary courses of action as to what tools they 

can use to begin to determine what the health of the 

network is. From a National Guard Bureau 

perspective, we had to determine which troops we 

had to task, who we could pull to support those 

efforts from a national level. And then we had to 

determine what kind of skill set that they had. And 

so Cyber Shield really now has given us the ability 

to make sure that everybody is standardized on their 

toolset so that if I call out to the brigade or I call out 

to a state to activate their defensive cyber operation 

element, we understand that they all are trained to 

the same level and then standardizing the tool sets 

in the tool access. Right. So during the Cyber Shield 

excuse me, during the solar winds event, we 

realized that we did not have the right accesses for 

the right people at the right time. So those are some 

of the lessons learned that we took from the solar 

winds incident. Right. And we mapped it to Cyber 

Shield because at the end of the day, solar winds 

showed us that we can't rely on a single tool to 

monitor the health of our network devices. And so 

we've started to to implement alternate courses of 

action so we don't have all of our eggs in one basket 

and we're making sure that we train the force in that 

way also over. 
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Wayne Hall [00:21:57] Thank you. Sorry, go ahead. You have heard of 

Courtney. 

Courtney Kube NBC [00:22:01] Just a very quick one, can you just explain what you 

mean when you said that making sure everyone had 

the accesses what was the breakdown there that you 

uncovered? 

George Battistelli [00:22:13] Yeah, absolutely. So from the the Army National 

Guard enterprise perspective, we run an enterprise 

network. And when you have incident responders, 

they may not work with the security tool sets that 

we're working with at the Enterprise every day. And 

so when we bring in extra help, we need to make 

sure that we're giving them access to the right tool 

sets and the right level of access to those tool sets. 

So if I bring on somebody, for example, from the 

state and they don't have the ability to to look at the 

security events that are coming across, then they 

can't be helpful and they can't be fully engaged in 

the mission. They're not fully mission capable until 

we get them the right access to the right tool sets so 

that they can use those tool sets and get the right 

information over. 

Courtney Kube NBC [00:22:57] Thank you. Thanks, Wayne. 

Wayne Hall [00:22:58] Thanks, Courtney. OK, so let's go to Ellie. Eleanor 

Watson from CBS News. Ellie are you with us? 

Eleanor Watson CBS [00:23:08] I'm here to thank you guys for doing this. Just a 

quick one. I am trying to get a handle on how often 

the guard is being called on to respond to these 

things because we don't learn about all of them. Do 

you have an estimate of how many times maybe in 
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a month the National Guard has to respond to? 

These types of security incidents. 

Wayne Hall [00:23:32] General Neely, I'll let you see if you can take a 

crack at that. 

Maj Gen Neely [00:23:38] Well, I will take a crack at it, I do not have the data 

in front of me and what we can do is circle back 

with our one of our team members at National 

Guard Bureau to come up with that data. But, I 

would estimate across the country a couple of times 

a month we're getting responses. You know, I spoke 

to in my opening comments about both our attorney 

general before, as well as our secretary as well as 

our one of our counties that had an issue. And what 

we found is that most of those cases, the guard was 

advised and what we talk about, those partnerships 

were very locked into at the local level with the 

incident response team and the National Guard's 

advise. And sometimes we may be consulted for 

questions in that. And then if the events significant 

enough will actually roll out and support that 

particular event, either over the shoulder or 

virtually. But it really depends. I think what we've 

all seen across the last six months, Mr. Battistelli 

talked about the solar winds hacked, which 

happened in December, followed by a major attack 

on the Microsoft Exchange in January that was well 

publicized. I talked about two major critical 

infrastructure attacks. So these attacks and 

particularly ransomware are increasing very 

significantly over a month, over month. And so 

what we're starting to see is more, I think, issues 

arising across our country, particularly as 

ransomware becomes more prevalent. And Lt. Col. 

Rhodes spoke to that a little bit in his comments 

when he was talking about responding to a 
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ransomware event. So I don't know if we Lt.Col. 

Rhodes had anything additional or if that answers 

your question. 

Lt Col Rhodes [00:25:41] No, I can add a couple of things here. So, you 

know, one of the unique pieces of our union is that 

we're 54 states and territories. And so each of the 

states utilizes the guard a little bit differently. In 

Colorado, for example, we tend to be very 

proactive. We're out there. We do annual exercises 

with mission partners to build those relationships 

left of boom so that we have an opportunity if 

something does arise, that we can do that over the 

last every single election cycle. For the last five, six 

years now, we've been in the room with our 

secretary of state, helping to monitor, helping to 

advise, helping to look at that. Thankfully, we didn't 

see anything like that this year. So that was that was 

definitely positive. But part of that part of what it is, 

is, again, every state is a little different. Every state 

utilizes the guard a little differently. But I will tell 

you that every single state and territory is plumbed 

with cyber operators to go out there and actually 

support when needed. And I think that's very, very 

important. And part of what we do at Cyber Shield 

is a level set that training. We bring all of these 

teams in, we assess them, we provide them pointers 

as they walk out the door, says here's things you 

need to work on to continue to improve so that over 

time we get to a solid 100 percent readiness across 

the board for the 54 states and territories. 

Wayne Hall [00:27:03] Sir, thank you. I'd like to pass this over to Chief 

Griffith, who's operator assignment operator out of 

North Carolina at his perspective a little bit on what 

a response in his state looks like and then see if 

there's anything that certain can add up to that. 
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Chief Griffith, can you please introduce yourself to 

the group and then please try to talk about how a 

response unfolds to North Carolina. 

CW3 Dionysus Griffith [00:27:28] Good afternoon, everyone. Chief Griffith with 

North Carolina National Guard G6 Security 

response force for a response that's our side deals 

with a lot of the civilian agencies, contacting the 

liaison in our state we are tied in with and we go 

through several challenges. So initially sending out 

a couple of personnel maybe to see a team lead to 

get a response person to see what exactly happened, 

maybe tracked down how it happened. And 

depending on how serious the incident is, the 

additional personnel to do some training or a small 

triage and then of responses, how do we move 

forward and building and better securing their 

network infrastructure.

Wayne Hall [00:28:18] Thank you, Sgt. Huff, can you provide anything 

from the Kentucky perspective? 

Sgt Tucker Huff [00:28:23] So Kentucky is beginning their relationships with 

the local state governments and our mission 

partners. So we are in that first stages of how we 

can be integrated or embedded to assist those 

people that need those training or whether the 

validation exercises or whatever they may need. 

Back to you, Mr. Hall.

Wayne Hall [00:28:43] Thank you. Ellie, did you have a follow up or are 

you OK? 

Eleanor Watson CBS [00:28:47] I'm good. That was great. Thank you. 

Wayne Hall [00:28:49] Thank you, Steve Beynon, are you on the phone? 
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Steve Beynon, Military.com [00:28:53] Yeah. Hey, yeah. Can you hear me? 

Wayne Hall [00:28:55] Yes. 

Steve Beynon, Military.com [00:28:56] Awesome. Thanks. Real real quick. I don't know if 

this might be a question for Colonel Rhodes or 

anyone else can join in. If you can kind of paint me 

a picture of what this is in the big picture, is this 

sort of the cyber equivalent of NTC? And then if 

you can kind of go into a little bit about what the 

OP floor is actually doing, maybe specific 

scenarios, things that they're actually going to be 

training on. 

Lt Col Rhodes [00:29:21] Sure, Steve. Happy to do that. So cyber is akin to 

NTC. So that's a really good analogy. These teams 

train all year. We actually provide them with pre 

training events that they can do. So they should they 

have the time again, a lot of it. Again, 54 states and 

territories, they build their own training plans. They 

do that stuff. But we do provide them the 

opportunity to get on range and do some of that free 

training. And then they come to NTC, if you will, 

cyber shield, and they go through a standardized set 

of training. So we provide during our training week, 

we provide them 85 sets of DOD8570-8140. That's 

the regulation that says what professional 

certifications and training soldiers had and the joint 

services have to have to operate on Dotan. So we 

provide some of that. We provide some technical 

training. But if they've completed those tasks, 

there's a lot of things we do in joint-training. During 

exercise week we bring in both our defensive cyber 

operations elements. So that's what exists in each of 

the 54 states and territories. Those are eight to ten 

person elements. And then we also have our cyber 

protection teams that are all up in our 91 cyber 
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brigade. And so they come along as well. And so 

our DCOE's are in a scenario where they are doing 

an advise and assist mission to an area of critical 

infrastructure. This year our scenario is focused on 

in a civilian company that is polluting water in a 

town and they that pollution is being caused by a 

cyber attack against my OP floor. And so they come 

in there. The OP floor has been in that network. 

They are in that network and they're continuing to 

attack in that work and give and give the blue teams 

are so our maneuver elements, our defensive cyber 

ops elements and CBTs things to find artifacts to 

discover, try to stop them in the sense of the attack. 

Right. Working with those mission partners. And 

that's really key here. Just because our maneuver 

elements actually catch the OP floor guys in the act, 

it doesn't mean that they can just stop something. 

They have to work with that mission partner who 

owns that network to say, hey, here's what we 

found, here's some recommended changes. How do 

we do that and continue to operate and do the 

production environment? Do not break a bunch of 

stuff, but our OP floor will do Web based attacks. 

They will do network based attacks. They'll do host 

based attacks that we give them. We give the OP 

floor carte blanche to do whatever they need to to 

get that point across to deliver those in line cyber 

effects so that our maneuver elements can actually 

see the attacks and then learn what those look like. 

So when they go back to not only their National 

Guard jobs, but to their civilian jobs, they're 

actually much better trained than they were when 

they got to us at Cyber Shield. That answers your 

question. 

Steve Beynon, Military.com [00:32:06] Yeah, I've seen it. 
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Steve Beynon, Military.com [00:32:07] This is almost equivalent to a platoon like Live Fire 

or something like that. What's a general time a 

whole scenario would take? 

Lt Col Rhodes [00:32:17] Absolutely. So, yeah, it is. It's kind of like platoon 

live fire. That's a good analogy. So that's the 

scenario. The exercise week runs for a week and it 

builds on itself. So the team walks in the door. They 

figure out the lay of the land. They work with the 

mission partner. They figure out how broken the 

network is. At the same time, the OP forces in the 

background doing their stuff. And then we have a 

number of, well we dont want to give way too much 

because I'm sure they'll be some some of my 

operators out there in the maneuver, elements that 

are going to look at for clues. Right. The answers to 

the questions for the scenario. And so they get the 

opportunity to see a number of very advanced 

attacks by the OP floor and to try to catch them and 

then ultimately try to figure out how would they 

stop set attacks from happening. The OP floor is 

going to have multiple vectors into the broken 

network. In the case of what we're talking about for 

the scenario. And so it's going to be very hard to get 

them out. And that's the whole goal, because once 

attackers get into these networks today, they hang 

out. They persist as long as they possibly can. And 

that's what my OP floor does. 

Steve Beynon, Military.com [00:33:19] Great. Just a clarification. I think someone said it 

was 750 troops involved. Is that a combination of 

army and air? 

Lt. Col. Rhodes [00:33:25] So that is a good question. So that's actually we're 

very joint this year. We have a combination of 

Army Guard, Air Guard, Coast Guard, Navy, some 

active component folks and obviously our civilian 
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mission partners. So it's a large, very, very joint 

flavor of the exercise this year. 

George Battistelli [00:33:45] Hey, Brad, really, really quick. I can just give one 

comment on that, too, so when we talk about the 

realism, this is the realism, right? So a defensive 

cyber operation element responding to a state active 

duty or a mission on the Department of Defense 

Information Network if they're responding, the 

expectation is that the adversary, our peer near peer, 

has already compromised that. And they're walking 

into a compromised situation. And that's where we 

inject the realism because they are walking into an 

environment that is, you know, potentially 

compromised, known, compromised, and they need 

to work backwards from there.

Wayne Hall [00:34:23] All right, very good. Thank you. So Bianca from 

Reserve and National Guard magazine or you 

online, you have a question? 

Bianca Strzalkowski, Reserve & National Guard Magazine [00:34:33] 

Yes, I am. What challenges exist in moving this 

exercise virtually?

Wayne Hall [00:34:42] I think Mr. Botticelli, I think you mentioned 

students having experienced last year in this. 

George Battistelli [00:34:49] Yeah, I can I can start and then Lieutenant Colonel 

Rhodes can certainly shore up any cracks that I 

miss. But I appreciate that question. So certainly 

last year, a lot of uncertainty right. In the early 

stages of covid, I think we pivoted three different 

times. We were going to be at Camp Williams, 

Utah, and then we pivoted to Camp Atterbury and 

then we pivoted to San Luis Obispo and then finally 

online. And each time was a little bit different. 
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Right, because we were trying to get to the point 

where can we do 100 percent? Can we do 80 

percent? Can we do 50 percent? We went to the 

Microsoft team's commercial virtual remote 

environment, the CVR environment this year. The 

CVR, as everybody knows, went away on June 

15th. So that helped us even more in our planning 

because we started off on a version of Microsoft 

teams that any of the soldiers or the traditional 

soldiers could get on their phone. And so now we've 

moved to the A365 environment where, you know, 

they have to have a GFE or a CAC. And so it's 

made it a little bit more difficult. And so we've had 

some some significant challenges there. As a matter 

of fact, we are still using a team's environment, but 

a a hybrid environment for the exercise because 

we're actually doing our DVD on Cisco WebEx. So 

it's not a a one size fits all solution, but we really 

are trying to to get to the point where we can all get 

back together because virtual works. But you don't 

get that that person working together. So with that 

being said, I'll pass it to to Colonel Brad Rhoades 

now. 

Lt. Col. Rhodes [00:36:28] Thanks, George. No, the virtual environment is 

challenging. You know, it's in the room, right? 

Whether you're in the room together, I can look 

around the room and see who's reacting to certain 

things and that kind of thing. And depending on 

where soldiers participate from and we've done our 

entire planning of this event virtual. The first time 

that we're going to actually get back together with 

at least a portion of the staff to execute the exercise 

is, is when we go out to Utah next week to start 

getting things set up to actually go. And so it's 

going to be great to see everybody, but it's 

definitely challenging because, again, you don't 
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necessarily get the interaction and the feedback that 

nonverbal communications that you see elsewhere. 

Right. The good news is, we have a pretty close and 

tight knit group of planners here and guard cyber 

that have put this thing together that once we 

pivoted from, you know, to virtual last year and 

then we pretty much got told you're going to 

conduct your entire planning cycle for this exercise 

virtual. We all sort of got used to it. I literally 

conducted because of covid-19. I literally did every 

single planning conference from the comfort of my 

home offices, which where I'm sitting at today. So 

that was that was kind of nice. And, you know, 

folks like to see my cats when they come to visit. 

They've been booted out for this discussion. But I'd 

actually like to ask Deon to jump in on this, because 

Deon's one of my planners on the forensic side of 

the House. And Deum, what was your experience 

with the virtual thing? Was it good? Was it bad? 

You know, are you excited to get back in person 

next year? What do you thinking. 

CW3 Dionysus Griffith [00:37:59] I would definitely good about being able to work 

from home and still be able to accomplish things, 

but I look forward to going out and actually being 

around in relationships with other states and other 

partners. 

Lt. Col. Rhodes [00:38:11] Awesome. Wayne, back to you. 

Wayne Hall [00:38:13] Thank you, did you have a follow up or are you 

good Bianca? 

Bianca Strzalkowski, Reserve & National Guard Magazine [00:38:18] 

My only other follow up, in addition to cyber 

operators, what other sort of billets are involved in 

this? 
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George Battistelli [00:38:26] There's there's a lot Bianca, I'll turn that one to to 

Brad Rhodes, because Brad will be able to tell you 

better. But I mean, we've got IO, we've we've got 

the entire gamut because, again, this is the largest 

unclassified cyber exercise in the Department of 

Defense. And it doesn't take place without... Let me 

foot stop really quick, an all volunteer workforce. 

Right. So everybody is doing this in addition to 

whatever position they're currently doing the MDay soldiers. But there's a lot, Brad, if you want to 

go through some of them. 

Lt. Col. Rhodes [00:38:59] Absolutely, George. I mean, we have an entire what 

we call a joint staff. So we have personnel, intel, 

operations, logistics, all of that. We have we have 

an entire training cell which is put together an 

awesome training plan for this week or for this 

coming two weeks from now. We have a white cell 

so akin to NTC, right. We have a white cell that has 

done the bulk of the exercise planning scenario, the 

range development and builds. We have a legal 

team. We have our opposing force. We have our 

assessments team. We have awesome help desk 

team that's going to help everybody that has issues. 

We obviously have our maneuver elements spread 

across. So we've got 30 plus blue teams out there 

doing amazing work across the 54 states and 

territories. And then the one thing that George 

touched on that I do want to highlight is the fact that 

we do bring in information operations to this. So, on 

range, we actually have social media platforms and 

we allow our information operations folks to come 

in, developed personas and interact and provide that 

what we like, what I like call the the cyber of the 

fog of cyber war. When we get out into the actual 

operational environment, we've seen a lot of things 
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when it comes to disinformation and 

misinformation and influence operations conducted 

by actors outside of the United States and in the 

United States. And so we actually simulate and 

deliver that so that confusion, if you will, as to 

who's them, who you who you should be paying 

attention to as a voice out in cyberspace versus who 

you shouldn't. We provide that to the blue teams 

that adds that sort of multi domain operations flavor 

to the operation. And next year, we're looking to 

bring in some of the electronic warfare capabilities. 

So we have a lot of moving pieces and parts that 

George mentioned within the exercise. 

George Battistelli [00:40:41] I'd also add on to that really quick is that we also 

have legal on staff with us as well, because as you 

get into cyber right and whether it's a response or an 

activity, we've got to make sure that we're staying 

within the authorities and we're doing everything 

legally. And it gives the legal personnel the ability 

to practice and to vet and to really sharpen their 

skills as well. And so we bring everybody together 

so that when we have this next solar winds or next 

cyber event that everybody has read it and 

everybody knows what we're supposed to do. And I 

think that's very important. 

Wayne Hall [00:41:21] All right. Thank you both. So. Sophia from 

Bloomberg, are you online, do you have a question? 

Sophia Cai, Bloomberg News [00:41:33] Can you guys hear me? 

Wayne Hall [00:41:34] Yes, we're here. We're hear you just fine. 

Sophia Cai, Bloomberg News [00:41:40] I was wondering, I mean, I guess this is another 

question for Mr. Battistini. And it's not directly 

related to the training, but I wonder if you have any 
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insight into whether any tax data at the IRS might 

have been access and if we will ever know what 

was taken because of the lack of logging? 

George Battistelli [00:42:11] So that would not be something that I would have 

specific purview on at the Army National Guard 

because I do not monitor the tax networks, so that 

would be something that, you know, would be 

monitored by another entity. So everything that I 

have under my purview are the Army National 

Guard networks, portion of the Department of 

Defense Information Network. And so I don't have 

the answer to that question over. 

Wayne Hall [00:42:38] Yes, Sophie, we we're solely focused here on the 

guard networks, the DOD network that the guard 

monitors and manages maintains. So that question 

is probably best addressed to DHS or the IRS 

themselves. Do you have anything specifically 

related to Cyber Shield? 

Sophia Cai, Bloomberg News [00:42:58] Yes, could you just repeat, and I think the first 

someone from the NBC asked this question, but 

what your specific role was in the Solarwinds 

response? 

George Battistelli [00:43:17] Yeah, for sure. So my role in the solar wind's 

response as I was the task force incident 

commander, so I quarterbacked the Army National 

Guard response to the solar winds event. And so it 

was trying to determine whether we had a 

compromise across all the 54 states and territories, 

trying to determine what version of solar winds that 

the states were on. Because if you remember back, 

there was only certain versions of the Orion 

software that was thought to be compromised or 

known to be compromised, and then making sure 
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that we had those devices offline, sending forensics 

if needed. And I will say that the Army National 

Guard did not experience a single compromise from 

the solar winds event. So we had no compromises 

associated with it. But it did help us to standardize 

our data sets. Right. What we are capturing, what 

data we should be capturing, which tools we should 

be using, standardize our training. And a lot of that 

has gone into cyber shield this year. So when solar 

winds number two happens, we'll we'll be ready and 

we'll be there over. 

Sophia Cai, Bloomberg News [00:44:42] Thank you. Wayne, I think you're still muted. 

Wayne Hall [00:44:45] Sorry about that. We will move on to Dave Dahl 

from WTX radio, understand you have a question 

Sir. Are you there, Mr. Dahl? OK, moving on, 

MSgt. Erich Smith, I understand you have a 

question. 

MSgt Erich Smith [00:45:10] Master Sergeant Erich Smith, National Guard 

Bureau, Public Affairs. This question is for 

Sergeant Huff. Sorry, Sergeant. If we're going to 

put you on the spot here, I reviewed your 

background, obviously very impressive, but still, 

even given your background and all the amazing 

things you've done on the civilian side and of 

course, with the Army Guard, is there anything that 

you hope to take away from this exercise in 

particular? 

Sgt Tucker Huff [00:45:38] Yes, MSgt. Smith, I hope to keep building on my 

skills, I always when you start to develop your 

SOPs or your battle drills, you cant always use the 

same steps with each event or each incident. You 

always have to adapt and overcome. We are also 

placed on different teams with different individuals, 
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probably from different states. And they also do not 

have the same steps that we take. So learning how 

to integrate well with their mission partners, other 

National Guard units, local, state authorities, it's 

more of a learning experience. Always keep your 

toes and it bonds my experience level so I could 

offer more to the table with each passing year. 

Gen. Hokanson [00:46:19] Thank you very much. And, of course, the civilian 

media, SOPs: standard operating procedures. Thank 

you, 

Sgt Tucker Huff [00:46:27] Thank you, MSgt. 

Wayne Hall [00:46:28] Thank you. I think Mr. Dahl had a problem coming 

off mute, so I'll ask his question on his behalf. Mr. 

Dahl with WTX Radio in Springfield, Illinois. His 

question is for General Neely. It seems as if the bad 

guys and the good guys are neck and neck in this 

constantly with one step ahead of the other. Is that 

right? And will this ever change or end? Sir, would 

you like to address that?

Maj Gen Neely [00:46:53] No, absolutely love to. Thanks, Dave, for the 

question and thanks for joining us today, as we 

talked earlier about all the support that has to occur 

with Cyber Shield. I think one good example is our 

public affairs. And Col. Brad Layten's here with me 

helps over the last five or six years support cyber 

shield. So it's really a team effort to really 

appreciate all the supporters of the operators.

Today's question, yes. You know, cyber continues 

to leapfrog each other. And look we've talked a lot 

today about even Sergeant Huff just referred to 

changing the standard operating procedures. We 

cannot rely on the procedures that we had even six 

or eight months ago and their processes and take 
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those for granted that that's going to keep the bad 

guys out. And what we saw with the solar winds 

attack and really even going back to 2016 when we 

saw the attacks on the election system, at that point, 

many people would say, why would why would 

anybody attack an election system that way or why 

are we really concerned? It was even considered 

piece of critical infrastructure when it was initially 

attacked. And today it is because we had to change 

our processes and procedures. And as technology 

changes, we these cyber very loosely, but as 

technology changes and we see things like artificial 

intelligence, quantum computing and many of these 

5G and all these other new autonomous vehicles, all 

these new things are going to open up the aperture 

for additional attacks. We live in an IP based 

society, which means we have a lot of conveniences 

with things like refrigerators, with cameras in it, 

and Wi-Fi enabled everything. But those products 

also bring vulnerabilities because of cybersecurity 

issues. And so we'll constantly be, I think, working 

through this as we continue to look for the better 

way to build the mousetrap and protect, protect our 

country. And that's a great thing about Cyber 

Shield, is we'll bring in new techniques and new 

approaches to deal with these issues, much like we 

did, much like the lessons learned from the smaller 

ones attack that Mr Beazley spoke of. Hope that 

helps. 

Wayne Hall [00:49:14] All right, sir, thank you. Want to go next to Ryan 

Morgan from American Military News. Are you 

online? Do you have a question? 

Ryan Morgan, American Military News [00:49:29] 

No question at this time, I appreciate it. 
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Wayne Hall [00:49:32] All right, thank you, Sir. David Strom from CSO. 

Are you online and do you have a question? 

Nothing heard will go to NBC five Chicago, are 

you online, do you have a question? Nothing heard 

Josh Norwood, are you online and do you have a 

question? 

Josh Norwood [00:50:02] I am on the line, but no questions. 

Wayne Hall [00:50:05] All right, thank you. All right. Is there anybody in 

the group that we that has a question for the panel? 

MSgt Erich Smith [00:50:13] I have one more question, Mr. Hall. That's OK,. 

Wayne Hall [00:50:15] That's fine. 

MSgt Erich Smith [00:50:18] Again, this is MSgt Erich Smith here NGB public 

affairs. So obviously, Sergeant, you're more 

embedded in the cyber trenches, if you will, and 

you have a greater pulse on all of this being, what, 

next year, battle buddies and so forth. So I'm just

kind of curious, what is it besides having the 

aptitude for this? What is it about cyberspace that 

you really find engrossing? And what is some of 

your battle buddies tell you what they find 

interesting about cyberspace as well. 

Sgt Tucker Huff [00:50:56] Yes, Master Sergeant, this is Sergeant Tucker Huff. 

It's always the learning that you have like 

everything you think you always know everything 

about everything or you want to know. And it's 

always changing, wanting to be the tools, whether it 

be developing their own tools, the networking, the 

experiences, being able to feel like I'm going above 

and beyond my call of duty where I first came in 

and I was during the 9/11 attacks, then I was like, 

well, I'm here to defend my country, but here I am. 
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I'm helping defend the domestic front, even when it 

comes to other local state authorities or even other 

civilian companies. I'm going above and beyond. 

I'm doing what I'm doing, a more personable effect 

where, you know, they get to interface with me 

directly. I get to travel more of the United States. I 

get to see different teams. I get to learn how they 

think. It's just. Different from just being in a regular 

unit. I come from a signal unit and most people 

don't know your name when you're going out on a 

mission. And here I get to be able to showcase what 

I know and I get to gain more from others. 

MSgt Erich Smith [00:52:11] Thank you. 

Wayne Hall [00:52:13] Thank you. I actually Ryan Morgan just put a 

message in the group text. I think we've addressed 

this, but he may have missed it earlier. This is 

probably for Colonel Rhodes, or Mr. Botticelli, he's 

asking about the scenario for cyber shield, how we 

describe the scenario and it will be something 

similar to the pipeline attack. Can you can you 

reiterate on that, sir? 

Lt Col Rhodes [00:52:42] Absolutely. So, yes. So the scenario this year is we 

have our elements. So that's our defensive cyber 

operations elements. There's one of those in each of 

the 54 states and territories. And we also have along 

for the ride the Navy, Coast Guard teams. Those are 

cyber protection teams. We also have National 

Guard and Air National Guard cyber protection 

teams in the mix. And so the scenario that's going to 

be in front of them is they are going to be 

responding to a civilian organization. So truly a 

commercial organization, an entity that is causing 

pollution to a water system, to the water system, 

waterways in a town. They believe that is being 
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caused by a cyber actor. In fact, it is. And so and 

that cyber actor is alive and in the network when the 

teams arrive. And what they're going to discover is 

that the network is is very, very broken. We are 

doing a traditional incident response. And so 

previous years in Cyber Shield, we've created a 

we'll call it a discovery learning opportunity for the 

teams this year. There's less discovery learning. It's 

we're telling them when they walk in the door, the 

network is broken. You've got to figure out what 

happened to the network, how it got broken and do 

that traditional, like I said, incident response and 

walk all of those steps that we do. It is, as Mr. 

Botticelli mentioned, we are bringing in elements of 

solar winds. So part of that is access to the logging 

and understanding and being able to hunt through 

and look at the logs to discover what happened. So 

that's part of it. And then not directly related to 

Colonial Pipeline, but again, a large chunk of this 

network is what we saw with Colonial Pipeline, 

which was the administrative network. That was 

where the incursion occurred, at least from the 

reporting that I've seen. And then everything else 

was then shut down out of an abundance of caution 

to make sure that the actors had not moved laterally 

or pivoted across the network into the industrial 

control systems. So we have a very similar setup in 

our network for the blue teams. This is typically 

what we do every year. We introduced Skata and 

Industrial Control Systems about four years ago 

now because that is a huge part of what we see out 

there. We see that you see Skata industrial control 

system integration across not only the critical 

infrastructure areas as specified by DHS, but you 

see it in building systems, the whole nine yards all 

across the board, we see this intersection of Skada, 

ICS, Internet of Things, and we have to understand 
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what that looks like. And so that is truly a part of 

what we do at Cyber Shield is very similar to that 

construct. Hopefully that answers your question. 

Wayne Hall [00:55:20] Thank you, sir. Briefly, I'd like to be following up 

on Sergeant Smith's last question, like the pitch 

back to chief. The Chief Griffith, and ask if you 

could offer some of your personal perspectives as a 

cyber operator, what operating and what doing this 

job in the guard really means to you and how it 

shaped you, your military career? 

CW3 Dionysus Griffith [00:55:47] This is Chief Griffith. So for me, it's kind of 

something that's more than just on a day to day life 

in the country is more local to your state and with 

people that you see everyday in your community, 

helping protect them on the IT front. That's really it, 

just make sure everybody's safe domestic side here 

and to our states, the individual states. 

Wayne Hall [00:56:18] All right, thank you, sir. All right, I believe that's 

just about all the time we have, unless there's one 

last question from anybody, give a minute to see if 

anybody has one last question. All right, nothing 

heard. So before we leave, I'd like to I'd like to ask 

General Neeley, do you have anything else you'd 

like to provide with a little leave the group with 

today? 

Maj Gen Neely [00:56:48] But just again, thank everybody for taking the time 

to join us. This is a very important exercise and I 

think based on the questions that came today, I 

think all of you understand the significance of cyber 

and cyber cyberspace in our in our society today. 

We continue to watch the evolution. And I speak on 

this topic on a regular basis. And I like to 

sometimes talk about Pearl Harbor and what that 
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meant to us and the development of the Space Force 

and what that development meant to space and how 

that changes in. And we're seeing an evolution in 

cyber right now that we're living in some days that 

are very unique. And most of society doesn't 

understand it because they may not live in this 

technology realm. But what we're doing is we're 

seeing an acceleration of risk and attacks that are 

coming forward. And so it's it's very important for 

us to exercise and train plan, as we talked about 

across our nation, because these attacks wont occur 

in big places. They will occur in small places across 

the nation, and it'll be small places that will affect 

larger and larger ways of our lives. So it's this is 

another example of where the National Guard, 

again, is community based. We're working closely 

with our employers, bringing unique skill sets 

together that we bring from industry, from people 

like Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes, who is a tech 

expert from industry that brings his special 

capabilities back to the military and helps lead 

events like this is a great example of of our citizen 

soldiers and airmen and what the great things they 

are doing. So, again, appreciate everybody's 

participation today. And we look forward to talking 

more during the exercise and there'll be more 

updates coming along. So thank you. 

Wayne Hall [00:58:45] Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Just got a note, Mr. 

Battistelli would like to add something as well. 

George Battistelli [00:58:53] Yeah, I appreciate it first. I appreciate everybody 

being on, but I just want to reiterate the thing that is 

different about the Army National Guard, 

specifically when we have the cyber shield effort 

really and a lot of these things, the rank is 

inconsequential because we bring people in. I think 
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we have a staff sergeant running our our red team. 

And frankly, it's because he's amazing. Right. And 

so you have very, very talented soldiers. And then 

we have the whole dual status. Right. So when we 

had the solar winds task force and I brought in 

Lieutenant Colonel Brad Rhodes, Brad Rhodes was 

feeding us information and then I was feeding him 

information. But guess what? He was still working 

also in his civilian capacity. So when he went back 

to a civilian capacity, he had information that he 

could share back and forth, obviously from an 

unclassified opportunity. But that is the goodness of 

the guard when we bring in those subject matter 

experts that have the ability to work back and forth 

every single day between industry and military, and 

they really bridge those relationships. So that's what 

we get from Cyber Shield that's different from any 

other event, because we have a collective of some 

of the sharpest minds in the Army National Guard 

where rank is inconsequential, skill is the defining 

factor, over.

Wayne Hall [01:00:11] Thank you, sir. And with that, ladies and 

gentlemen, I'd like to remind everybody had placed 

in the chat. Lieutenant Colonel Bradley is the public 

affairs officer for Cyber Shield. His contact 

information is in the box. It's the cell is 217-725-

2265, and he can be reached by email at 

Bradford.E.Leighton.mil@mail.mil. He'll be very 

happy to accommodate any requests that he can for 

as far as coverage of the actual exercise or assist 

with additional questions related to the exercise. If 

you have any other questions for us, you can reach 

us by email as well. Thank you all for your time and 

your your your effort to help us communicate the 

significance of Cyber Shield 2021.
Transcript

National Guard Bureau Public Affairs

Press Desk (703) 601-6767 

ng.ncr.ngb-arng.mesg.ngb-media-desk-owner@mail.mil

www.nationalguard.mil

[End of Audio]

Duration: 1-hour 00-minutes

For information regarding this transcript, please send an email to the 

National Guard Bureau Media Operations desk at ng.ncr.ngbarng.mesg.ngb-media-desk-owner@mail.mi

l.

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