International drill held to fight off cyberattacks
Nineteen countries have come together in Turkey to hold an international exercise aimed at strengthening international cybersecurity preparedness.
A cybersecurity drill was held in Istanbul, Turkey, on 15-16 May, aimed at strengthening international cybersecurity preparedness.
The drill was organised jointly by the International Telecommunication Union and the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (ITU-IMPACT), together with Turkey’s Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications and the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA).
This was the first such international cyber drill held in Turkey, and it attracted the participation of 19 countries - Albania, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, China, Georgia, Iran, Italy, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Romania, Sri Lanka, Senegal, Spain, Sudan, Turkey and Ukraine.
The International Cyber Shield Exercise (ICSE) aims to bring together national Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT) practitioners, senior government officials, cybersecurity experts, industry players and other stakeholder groups from ICT across the world under one roof.
ICSE 2014 primarily provided a platform for information sharing on key aspects pertaining to cybersecurity with particular emphasis on effective incident handling and international cooperation among the various stakeholders.
The event saw presentations from distinguished cybersecurity experts as well as workshops on forensic science and investigation, mobile security and standardisation in cybersecurity, and child online protection (COP). Participating national CIRTs engaged in a series of real-life cyber threat simulations to assess their incident handling capability.
“We are living in a hyperconnected world where we remain as strong as our weakest link,” said ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun I Touré. “We will continue to work towards building a global movement for global cybersecurity. In order to meet this goal, we need the right tools and measures not only to protect ourselves but also to test the effectiveness of our cybersecurity armour.”
“The cyber drill in Turkey provided a specialised platform for technical experts from CIRTs to acquire more know-how and to test the capabilities attributed to their CIRTs through simulation-of-attack scenarios,” said Brahima Sanou, director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau. “Attack simulations aim to assist countries in developing and implementing operational procedures in response to various cyber incidents, and to identify future planning and process improvements.”
“Bringing together national CIRTs, key cybersecurity stakeholders and industry experts at the same venue allows countries to grasp the importance of public-private partnership as an integral part of the international network in the fight against cyberthreats,” said Datuk Mohd Noor Amin, chairman of IMPACT.
ITU-IMPACT has so far conducted six cyber drills, involving more than 70 countries.
Details of the event are available at www.icse2014.org.
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