"AFTER project addresses the challenges posed by the need for vulnerability evaluation and contin-gency planning of the energy grids and energy plants considering also the relevant ICT systems used in protection and control.Project emphasis is on cascading events that can cause catastrophic outages of the electric power systems.The main addressed problems are related to high impact wide spread multiple contingencies, the most significant wide area criticality. This kind of contingencies and the following cascading effects can be caused by deliberate acts of terrorism, sabotage, criminal activity, malicious behaviour etc or they can simply be caused by a combination of accidents, natural disasters, negli-gence.Both risk analysis and risk mitigation will be pursued.In particular, two major objectives are addressed.The first is to develop a methodology and tool for the integrated, global vulnerability analysis and risk assessment of the interconnected Electrical Power Systems considering their interdependencies.This objective meets the TSO (Transmission System Operator) need to overcome current approaches based on separate evaluations of either power system or ICT system. Further, the adoption of risk concepts allows a more in-depth, quantitative evaluation of the security of the electrical power system.The second objective is to develop algorithms and tools supporting contingency planning in a two-fold approach:• preventing or limiting system disruption, by means of physical security techniques and defence plans; and• re-establishing the system after a major disruption, by means of restoration plans.To this aim, AFTER propose the use of the global risk assessment methodologies as a support to defence plan design. A language to model defence plans functionalities and ICT architecture is de-veloped. New defence plan concepts are also introduced to cope with emergency situations."