Hungary participated in NATO’s largest international cyber defence exercise in this year as well

Due to its complexity, it took the 400 organizers one year to prepare the exercise plan for the event – launched by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Center of Excellence (CCDCoE) – and to create an environment consisting of more than 5500 virtual systems for its purpose. The composition and preparation of the Hungarian team was organized by the national defence sector. The participants of the exercise were drawn from the staff of the Ministry of Defence, the personnel of the Hungarian Defence Forces as well as from state and civilian organizations which cooperate with national defence organizations and participate in domestic cyber defence activities. Besides the IT field, legal experts, strategic analysts as well as media and public relations experts were also assigned an important role in the 90-plus man Hungarian team of the training audience.

Locked Shields is a Red Team vs Blue Team training exercise, with the Red Teams composed of hostile, attacking troops while Blue Teams of troops in defence. The task of the Blue Teams is to protect against large-scale cyber attacks the complex CIS systems and critical infrastructure of a fictional country, including the state-of-the-art telecommunications, satellite, energy and bank systems.

The annually organized exercise provides an excellent opportunity for the nations to exercise real-time, complex cyber attacks and to assess how efficiently and quickly they can counter them.

Further information about the exercise: https://ccdcoe.org/news/2023/6016/