Cyber security teams of critical service providers of Lithuania found a note saying their data had been encrypted and ransom was expected by the end of the day as they switched on their computers in the morning. Menacing as it sounds, this time it was luckily the largest national cyber security exercise Cyber Shield OpEx organized in October by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
“The exercise focused on challenging the organisations with as realistic conditions as possible as they needed to test their response, actions and ability to restore the service in case of a cyber-incident,” said Head of the NCSC Competence Development Section Maj Mindaugas Gedminas.
Aside from the encryption software, the training audience were faced with other cyber threats which have been on the rise: DDoS, website hacks, defacement and data leak. Another area the exercise has put to test was the ability of the participants to report cyber incidents to the reasonable institutions: NCSC, Lithuanian Police, and the State Data Protection Inspectorate.
All the incidents were completed live on the NCSC cyber range this year for the first time. As a result, the training organisations were faced with cyber-incidents throughout the exercise and were able to resolve the challenge in a safe and controlled environment.
The organisations were able to test not only their technical capacity but also the ability to ensure effective communication with the society and clients.
“In reality, it is not the IT chief who is the first to find out a cyber-incident has happened but the public relations officer, as media requests for commentary on an unresponsive website, dissatisfied clients cut off from digital services or leaked organization data on the internet pour in. Therefore, public communication skills, ability to provide technical data and recommendations to the clients expeditiously are a vital skill to develop,” says NCSC Senior Advisor and head of the exercise team in the media role Rūta Apeikytė
The total of 75 critical service providers of Lithuania trained in Cyber Shield OpEx 2024, approx. half of them (39) also honed public communication skills.