Schools, buildings to face mock outages, phishing in Total Defence drill
Organisations, schools and individuals will experience simulated power outages over a two-week period in February, due to a “phishing attack” by an unknown group.
In this scenario, the power outage was caused by a ransomware spread through phishing by an unknown group.
This simulated attack, as well as various other disruption or preparedness activities, will be carried out as part of this year’s Total Defence Exercise, named Exercise SG Ready 2025.
The exercise will run from Feb 15 to 28, and aims to encourage everyone to plan for potential disruptions, strengthen their business continuity plans for power disruptions or phishing attacks, and prepare to respond effectively.
In all, over 800 organisations, schools, and units from educational, community, businesses, and government sectors will take part. More than 20 buildings and two MRT stations will be going through simulated power disruptions as well.
Exercise SG Ready 2025 is a signature event of SG60. It invites Singaporeans to reflect on the crises and disruptions that the country has gone through in the last 60 years and what the country might face going forward. It is co-led by the Ministry of Defence and the Energy Market Authority.
To prepare for the exercise, Mindef released a scenario video showing how a phishing attack can cause disruptions and affect our daily lives. Members of the public are encouraged to watch it on https://go.gov.sg/sgreadyvideo.
Under the exercise, over 20 buildings in the city area will be switching off their facade lights to simulate a blackout from Feb 15 to 16.
These buildings include the Supreme Court, Singapore Management University, National Heritage Board museums and St Andrew’s Cathedral.
City Hall MRT station will also simulate power outages on Feb 16 from 1am to 3.30am. SMRT will engage 300 community participants in a realistic emergency preparedness exercise. The participants will be guided by SMRT staff and Transcom to disembark from the train onto the tracks and evacuate through the station’s escape shaft.
A second disruption exercise will also be held at Hume MRT station, which is currently non-operational. Details for this exercise have not been disclosed.
Brigadier-General Frederick Choo, Mindef’s Deputy Secretary (Policy), said the MRT exercises will educate Singaporeans on how to react to power outages.
Companies like Mapletree Business City will simulate power disruptions within their premises and organise tabletop exercises with their tenants to strengthen their preparedness for potential disruptions on Feb 17. Quantedge Capital will be coordinating a financial sector-focused tabletop exercise as well.
In schools, MOE has developed resources to engage students on resilience in the face of possible power disruptions.
Schools are encouraged to participate in Exercise SG Ready through the simulation of power supply disruption, as well as through food or water disruptions.
For schools taking part in the food disruption exercise, Singapore Food Agency and food caterer Sats will distribute ready-to-eat meals to complement the experience.
To ensure businesses have their cyber defences ready, Mindef is partnering with the Singapore Business Federation to conduct a phishing exercise for 200 businesses, focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises.
The phishing e-mail will be customised for different sectors and will run over a period of a few days.
BG Choo said: “We aim to put Total Defence into action and strengthen Singaporeans’ resilience and responses in times of emergency.
“We believe that there’s a part for all Singaporeans to play to keep Singapore ready.”
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