In order to strengthen the cyber competencies of itself and other organizations providing critical services in the country, the National Cyber Security Center under the Ministry of National Defense (NKSC) is starting an intensive training period.
“Participating in exercises is one of the best ways for organizations to test their ability to manage cyber attacks of varying intensity independently and in cooperation with other institutions. In this way, the cyber resilience of not only individual organizations, but also that of our country as a whole is strengthened, therefore the organization of exercises and the general development of all cyber competences is one of the most important directions of the NKSC’s activities,” says NKSC director Liudas Ališauskas.
This year, the NKSC will organize or coordinate the participation of our country’s specialists in a total of seven cyber security exercises.
The first of them is the international cyber defense exercise “Locked Shields 2024” (“Suremti shieldi 2024”), which is organized by the NATO Joint Cyber Defense Competence Center and will take place in mid-April. Lithuania will participate in them by forming a joint team with cyber security specialists of the Dutch army.
“Lithuania’s bilateral military and cyber cooperation with the Netherlands is very close, therefore the formation of a joint team and joint participation in exercises will allow specialists from both countries not only to exchange experience, but also to further increase interoperability and the ability to act together in case of major crises,” says the Deputy Minister of National Defense Beside Monika Tučkutė.
The Netherlands is the second country after Germany in terms of the number of soldiers assigned to the NATO forward force battalion (NATO eFP) deployed in Lithuania. Specialists from Lithuania and the Netherlands have also been closely cooperating for several years by participating in the activities of the European Cyber Rapid Reaction Team (CRRT).
In June, the NKSC team will coordinate the participation of Lithuanian institutions in the European Union cyber security exercise “Cyber Europe 2024”. This year, they will be aimed at checking the energy sector’s ability to manage large-scale and cross-border cyber crises, operational information exchange processes and cooperation with responsible EU institutions.
In order to strengthen the competences of all our country’s critical service providers, NKSC will also organize five national cyber security exercises this year – four stages of the Cyber Shield PhishEx exercise and the Cyber Shield OpEx exercise.
The Cyber Shield PhishEx exercise is designed to develop and test employees’ resilience to social engineering-based messages from online scammers. Three exercises of this type will be aimed at all organizations of special importance and public sector, and one will be organized in cooperation with the Supreme Electoral Commission and will be designed to develop and test the resilience of electoral commissions to social engineering attacks.
The largest national cyber security exercise “Cybernetis shield OpEx” will traditionally be organized in October and all organizations of special importance and state information resources management are invited to participate. During several days of exercises, internal cyber incident management procedures of these organizations, technical knowledge of incident detection and ability to properly submit information about a cyber incident to NKSC and other responsible institutions, as well as public communication skills in informing the public about a cyber incident will be tested.
KAM inf.
