Brussels, 04/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - The EU and the United States conducted their first joint test of responses to cyber attack on Thursday 3 November, says the European Commission in a press release. Experts from both sides of the Atlantic came together to test two hypothetical scenarios: an attempt to extract sensitive information from national cyber security agencies and an attack on supervisory control and data acquisition systems in EU power generation equipment.
Two European institutions, the Commission and the External Action Service, have recently suffered cyber attack, as has the European emissions trading scheme, notes the Commission, which has, this year, put in place a team of experts - Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) - to fight cyber attacks.
The Cyber Atlantic 2011 test carried out on Thursday was organised by ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, and the US Department of Homeland Security. It grew out of the EU-US Working Group on Cyber-security and Cyber-crime, established in November 2010. A report on the exercise will be presented to the EU-US summit in Washington at the end of November. (SP/transl.rt)