ENISA tests the readiness the counter cyber-attacks of 200 organisations and 400 security professionals from 29 European countries in a day-long bi-annual exercise dubbed Cyber Europe 2014.
Described by the agency as the largest and most complex cyber-security exercise held in Europe, Cyber Europe 2014 brings together experts from both public and private sectors, including security agencies, national Computer Emergency Response Teams, ministries, telecoms, energy companies, financial institutions and ISPs. The scenario covers over 2000 incidents, such as DDoS attacks on online services, intelligence and media reports on attack operations, webs defacements, ex-filtration of sensitive information and attacks on critical infrastructure.
Being a distributed exercise, it involves several exercise centres across Europe coordinated by a central exercise centre. It also tests the EU-Standard Operational Procedures, a set of guidelines on the sharing of operational information on cyber crises.
“Five years ago there were no procedures to drive cooperation during a cyber-crisis between EU Member States," ENISA director Prof. Udo Helmbrecht says. "Today we have the procedures in place collectively to mitigate a cyber-crisis on European level. The outcome of today’s exercise will tell us where we stand and identify the next steps to take in order to keep improving.”
According to the ENISA Threat Landscape report threat agents have increased both sophistication and tools of attacks, as global web-based attacks increased by almost a quarter during 2013, while the number of data breaches was 61% higher than 2012.
