On October 19-21 over half a hundred private and public sector organisations are training in the largest national cyber defence exercise this year, Cyber Shield 2021 co-organised by the National Cyber Security Centre under the Ministry of National Defence, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), and the Lithuanian Research and Education Network LITNET data centre. The key exercise objective is to put to test the participants’ ability to respond swiftly and to manage cyber incidents of different types and scopes.
“Leaks of internal organization data, website hacks, infected workstations, cyber incidents resulting from poor remote work organisations – that is just a fraction of situations we have designed for exercise participants to address,” Exercise Director, head of the Cyber Defence Department of the National Cyber Security Centre Deividas Stumbras says.
Over 60 organisations have applied to take part in the exercise this year. Cyber security entities, i.e., organisations of public and private sector, that are responsible for information resources of the state, critical information infrastructure, public relations and electronic communications services make up the largest portion of the exercise participants.
The other group of exercise participants covers institutions responsible for managing and (or) investigation of cyber incidents – the National Cyber Security Centre, State Data Protection Inspectorate, and the Lithuanian Police.
This is the first year that financial institutions that are members of the Association of Lithuanian banks have been invited to train at the event.
One day of the exercise will focus on the authorities responsible for coordination of cyber incident management in Lithuania – members the Government, Seimas and President’s offices, State Security Department and the Ministry of National Defence.
All the participating organisations join the exercise from their usual work spaces which allows them to train more personnel, such as legal, communications and executives, alongside the IT experts.
The exercise is based on “train as you fight” concept: participants join with the capabilities, personnel and procedures they actually have and use. That allows participating organisations to get a realistic view of their cybersecurity situation.
Cyber Shield 2021 is not a competition for the first place, exercise participants will not be compared with each other or assessed.
