"NATO Cyber Game Tests Defenses Amid War in Ukraine"

NATO's large, annual cyber wargames, known as the Locked Shields exercise, will bring together technical experts from alliance countries and Ukraine on Tuesday.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence organizes the event, including fictional cyberattack exercises that test teams have to fend off under time pressure.  Anett Numa, an international policy adviser in the cyber policy unit of Estonia's ministry of defense, stated that this year's competition is significant for the countries participating because their cyber defense units have been on high alert since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.  The NATO alliance team includes around 30 cyber defenders from different NATO bodies and member countries with specializations such as communications, digital forensics, legal expertise, and recovering systems damaged from an attack.  Ian West, chief of the NATO Cyber Security Centre, noted that the exercise is useful for cyber defenders from different countries to communicate with each other about attacks on the same technology products that several governments use.  Mr. West also stated that NATO is using the same technology and, as we know, many of these technologies come to market, and unfortunately, they are vulnerable.  This year's exercise will focus on the "interdependencies between national IT systems." Anett Numa stated that the wargames don't draw on elements of the recent cyberattacks in Ukraine because those were too recent, but the exercise generally does include scenarios that occurred in real cyberattacks.  In 2021, more than 2,000 participants took part in a simulation that tested how a country might respond to a large-scale cyberattack on its financial system and keep critical functions running, such as payments.

The Wall Street Journal reports: "NATO Cyber Game Tests Defenses Amid War in Ukraine"