ESDC observes EDA's Cyber Defence Exercise in Athens

The exercise is designed to prepare strategic leaders to deal with cyberspace crisis management processes and to promote a Cyber Security and Cyber Defence strategic culture that can stimulate national synergies and foster cooperation between EU Member States.

The exercise setup includes presentations, as well as a decision-making exercise and an in-depth feedback session. The exercise audience is confronted with a customised fictional political scenario in which a crisis outside EU boundaries spills back to an EU Member State. Manifestations of this spillover are an escalating sequence of targeted cyber-attacks of differing degrees of severity, affecting both public and private sector entities, including national critical infrastructure such as telecommunications and internet service providers, the energy sector, water supply and the public health care sector; all of this has had an impact on the public, to the point of generating casualties. The exercise audience is asked to apply the existing legal and political framework to the escalating scenario. At the same time participants must react to the population's perception of the situation and maintain public order.

After 2015 in Austria, the ESDC observed an exercise of this type for the second time. The role of the ESDC must be seen in the context of the ongoing feasibility study on the creation of a possible Cyber Security and Defence training platform within the College's structure. The results of this study should be presented to EU Member States by the end of September 2017.