Preparing for A Real-Time Attack: World’s Largest Cyberdefense Exercise

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On Tuesday, Locked Shields kicked off the largest and most complex cyber defense exercise in the world, which is held every year to train cyber security experts for real-time attacks on national IT systems and critical infrastructures.

Several recent reports have indicated that the Russian military has been using sophisticated tools to attack Ukrainian government agencies and to break into Ukraine’s main power grid, thereby making the cyber sphere yet another battlefield in the ongoing war.

More than 2000 participants from more than 30 countries will participate in the exercise, which involves a large-scale cyber-attack. This year’s exercise will include organizations from various fields, including the medical and financial industries, which will provide cyber experts with additional insight into efficient approaches to defending network systems and critical infrastructure. A major goal of cyberattacks targeting countries is damaging a wide variety of vital infrastructures, so training professionals with simulations of similar scenarios is an essential process in developing additional strategies for ensuring national security in the cyber arena.

In the NATO exercise, participants compete in two groups to simulate a real cyber attack and defend against it. The blue group consists of cyber units that protect an imaginary country from a cyber attack by the red group. The participants are committed to securing a variety of infrastructure and networks that are a vital component of any modern state. These include power plants, water and telecommunications infrastructure, and medical and financial institutions, which are frequently the targets of cyber-attacks, according to ncia.nato.int.

Learn more at INNOTECH 2022 – The International Conference and Exhibition for Cyber, HLS, and Innovation by iHLS.