Locked Shields, the largest international cyber defense exercise, was recently held in Tallinn, Estonia. The NATO Cyber Defense Cooperation Center of Excellence (CCDCOE) organizes this annual exercise since 2010 to examine the cyber security capabilities of NATO member countries. It took more than six months to prepare for this exercise.
Its aim was to strengthen the Alliance's collective cyber defense policy and test the Allies' skills. Participants had a unique opportunity to demonstrate their ability to protect national civilian and military IT systems and critical infrastructure.
Locked Shields 2022 subjected approximately 5.500 virtual systems to more than 8.000 attacks. However, exercise is considered important not so much for its size as for its complexity.
The e'sblueκόμενες ομάδες έπρεπε όχι μόνο να αποδείξουν την ικανότητά τους να προστατεύουν τις κρίσιμες υποδομές μιας φανταστικής χώρας, αλλά και την αποτελεσματικότητά τους στην αναφορά λεπτομερειών σχετικά με την κατάσταση στο ψηφιακό πεδίο μάχης, στην εκτέλεση στρατηγικών αποφάσεων και στην επίλυση νομικών και πληροφοριακών επιχειρησιακών προκλήσεων. Για πρώτη φορά, το 2022, η τεχνική άσκηση περιλάμβανε επίσης την προσομοίωση της διαχείρισης των αποθεμάτων και των συστημάτων μιας κεντρικής banks.
The exercise focused mainly on the interdependencies of international information systems.
This year, more than 2.000 people from 32 participated in the exercise countries. Twenty-four countries were members of NATO, including the Slovak Republic's team, which participates in the exercise every year and was joined in 2022 by cyber security experts from the Czech Republic. Since there was a lot of interest, many countries joined forces to form joint groups, such as Slovakia with the Czech Republic, Lithuania with Poland, and Estonia with Georgia.
ESET had the opportunity to join the Slovak team in this exercise and thus prove to be a valuable member and partner of the country.
The Slovak-Czech team was formed by experts from the armed forces, government agencies and the private sector, including cybersecurity company ESET. Twenty-nine ESET security experts participated in the exercise, helping the SK-CZ team finish fifth overall and first in two sub-categories.
“Once again, the ESET team demonstrated their technical expertise in the Locked Shields 2022 exercise and helped the Slovak-Czech blue team achieve a very good ranking. ESET products were highly effective detectionof incidents and allowed us to proactively respond to emerging threats in a short period of time. I express my thanks to all involved for their participation and high level of professionalism", said the director of the Cyber Defense Center of the Slovak Republic.
The need for cybersecurity is becoming increasingly apparent given current events such as the invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic. As the global community becomes increasingly dependent on technology, malicious actors are increasing their efforts to attack both the public and private sectors. In response, Exercise Locked Shields uses the latest technologies to train national teams in a realistic scenario-based environment.
