News
ITU-IMPACT holds first ever pan-European cross-border cybersecurity drill, 19 nations participate in regionwide test of cybersecurity capabilities
October 2012 by ITU
ITU and its cybersecurity executing arm, the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (IMPACT), has organized the first UN-backed cross border cyber drill for Europe and CIS countries designed to test national cyber response capabilities and improve readiness and reaction in the event of a theoretical cyber attack.
Over 90 experts from 19 European and CIS countries were involved in the virtually simulated attack coordinated by ITU and IMPACT in collaboration with Bulgaria’s Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communication. The simulation, which was sponsored by ABI Research, took place during the ITU Regional Forum on Cybersecurity for Europe and CIS from 23-25 October 2012 in Sofia, Bulgaria.
The Applied Learning for Emergency Response Team (ALERT) cyber drill featured a total of eight actively participating countries: Armenia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Turkey and Ukraine, with 11 other European nations taking part as official observers: Albania, Austria, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal and Tajikistan.
A series of scenarios totalling 250 minutes were triggered during the exercise to put participants to the test and observe their responses. These scenarios included phishing, web defacement and wireless security breach.
The event also benefited from the participation of ITU-IMPACT’s key industry partners including Codenomicon, Internet Society Bulgaria, Kaspersky Lab, Lirex.com, Microsoft, Symantec and The Cyber Guardian.
It is the third in ITU-IMPACT’s series of ALERT cyber drills, with previous exercises taking place in the South East Asia region and the Arab region.
“This regional forum and associated cyber drill are concrete examples of the highly effective regional cooperation that is needed to combat the global scourge of cyber criminality,” said ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun I. Touré. “Through our partnership with IMPACT, ITU is putting state-of-the-art cybersecurity tools and expertise within reach of all 193 ITU Member States, and in particular our developing country members who might struggle to establish their own advanced national cybersecurity programme and infrastructure.”
“Because cybersecurity issues can become a national security threat, it is essential that CERTs/CIRTs (community emergency response teams/critical incident response teams) share information and experience on cross-border incident handling and collaborate and coordinate with government and industry players to address and mitigate these challenges and secure critical infrastructure,” said Datuk Mohd Noor Amin, Chairman of IMPACT.
With 144 countries now part of the ITU-IMPACT coalition, IMPACT is entrusted with the task of providing cybersecurity support and services to ITU’s Member States and other organizations within the UN system.
ITU-IMPACT’s global partnership now embraces over 200 industry, academia and international organizations.
