Brussels, 30/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - More than 200 organisations and 400 cybersecurity professionals from 29 countries in Europe tested resilience to cyber-attacks on Thursday 30 October in a simulation exercise, explained the European Commission and the the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA). “The sophistication and volume of cyber-attacks are increasing every day. They cannot be countered if individual states work alone or just a handful of them act together. (…) Only this kind of common effort will help keep today's economy and society protected,” commented EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Executive Director of ENISA Professor Udo Helmbrecht commented: “Five years ago there were no procedures to drive cooperation during a cyber-crisis between EU Member States. 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.”
In Cyber EUROPE 2014, experts from the public and private sectors including cyber security agencies, national Computer Emergency Response Teams, ministries, telecoms companies, energy companies, financial institutions and internet service providers are testing their procedures and capabilities against in a life-like, large-scale cyber-security scenario. This is the largest and most complex such exercise organised in Europe. More than 2,000 separate cyber-incidents will be dealt with, including denial of service attacks to online services, intelligence and media reports on cyber-attack operations, website defacements (attacks that change a website's appearance), ex-filtration of sensitive information, attacks on critical infrastructure such as energy or telecoms networks and the testing of EU cooperation and escalation procedures. ENISA will issue a report with key findings after the exercise ends. (IL)