MOSCOW, October 30 (RIA Novosti) — The biggest ever cybersecurity exercise is currently underway in Europe, the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) said Thursday.
"More than 200 organizations and 400 cyber-security professionals from 29 European countries are testing their readiness to counter cyber-attacks in a day-long simulation, organized by the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security," the agency said on its official website.
"In Cyber Europe 2014 experts from the public and private sectors including cyber security agencies, national Computer Emergency Response Teams, ministries, telecoms companies, energy companies, financial institutions and internet service providers are testing their procedures and capabilities against in a life-like, large-scale cyber-security scenario," ENISA said.
According to the agency, the ongoing exercise is the largest and most complex event of its kind to ever be organized in Europe. Participants are dealing with more than 2,000 separate cyberincidents "including denial of service attacks to online services, intelligence and media reports on cyber-attack operations, website defacements (attacks that change a website's appearance), ex-filtration of sensitive information, attacks on critical infrastructure such as energy or telecoms networks and the testing of EU cooperation and escalation procedures".
Exercise centers across Europe are taking part in the training, and are coordinated by a central exercise control center, ENISA informed. The exercise is much needed, as multiple countries are now capable of infiltrating "all kinds of targets", both private and governmental, the agency said.
According to ENISA's latest Threat Landscape report, global cyberattacks increased by almost a quarter from 2012 to 2013, while data breaches surged by 61 percent.
