Brussels, 04/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - Four hundred experts in cyber security took part, on 4 October, in a simulated European scale cyber-attack in order to test their readiness and cooperation. The experts involved in the test were from financial institutions, telecoms companies, internet service providers and local and national governments across Europe. “This cooperation is essential given the growing scale and sophistication of cyber-attacks. Working together at European level to keep the internet and other essential infrastructures running is what today's exercise is all about”, said Neelie Kroes, Commissioner for the Digital Agenda. Twenty-five countries have played an active part in the exercise organised by the member states, the Commission and the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), as well as four countries as observers. This, Cyber EUROPE 2012, is the second pan-European cyber exercise carried out to date after a first, less far-reaching exercise in 2010 (see EUROPE 10250). During the simulated distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaign, experts had to face 12,000 separate cyber incidents (including more than 30,000 emails) to test how they would respond to attacks against public websites and computer systems of major European banks. In coming days, ENISA will deliver an on-the-spot analysis of the exercise, before publication of a more complete report by the end of the year. (IL/transl.jl)