On Thursday, 4 November 2010 Europe’s cyber security experts tested their responses in the first ever pan-European cyber-attack simulation exercise.
The scenario for the exercise named “Cyber Europe 2010” saw experts trying to counter simulated hacker attacks in which Internet connections between European countries would be gradually lost or significantly reduced, with, at its worst, effectively all major cross-country connections in Europe out of use, disabling access to essential online services in most EU Member States. All participating states thus had to join forces to react to the fictional crisis.
The cyber security exercise was organised by the EU’s Member States in coordination with the European Network Security Agency (ENISA). Participating were all EU Member States, as well as Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, as well as various Member States’ public authorities, such as Communications Ministries, critical information infrastructure protection authorities, crisis management organisations, national computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs), national information security authorities and security intelligence organisations.
Supporting EU-wide cyber-security preparedness exercises is one of the actions foreseen by the Digital Agenda for Europe to enhance online trust and security, with more complex scenarios following Thursday’s exercise, ultimately going from European to global level.
