18 COLUMBIA, S.C. - U.S. Army National Guard Soldiers from the South Carolina National Guard Defense Cyber Optic Element (DCOE), under the state communications office, participated in Cyber Shield 21, the Department of Defense s largest unclassified cyber defense exercise, from July 10-24, 2021.
The first week of the exercise consisted of the Soldiers conducting training in specific skill sets including incident response, hacker tools, certified ethical hacker training, and other security-focused missions to allow Soldiers to develop their cyber skills. During the second week of the exercise, Soldiers were presented with a national cyber incident simulation to support a company or organization that came into contact with a potential cyber threat. The DCOE s role within this simulation was to help that company and ensure the integrity of their network and provide them with any cyber assistance that was authorized based on the rules of use of cyber, memorandums of u