Locked Shields: the largest cyber tutorial in the world. This year Sweden wins

(To Alessandro Rugolo, Danilo Mancinone)
19/04/21

Also this year, between 13 and 16 April, the cyber exercise was held Locked Shields

As every year, the preparation and conduct of the exercise saw thousands of civilian and military experts engaged in trying to protect the networks and systems of their competence. The numbers are representative: thirty participating countries, about 2000 experts, 5000 virtualized systems and 4000 different attacks! Twenty-two participating teams. 

News also in relation to the sectors concerned, in addition to cyber in all its aspects, the teams involved have had to face influence operations conducted through Information Operations. Indeed, among the objectives of the exercise there was also the examination of how technological evolution and deepfakes they can affect future conflicts.

In addition to technical aspects, the exercise touched on strategic aspects in order to exercise the entire national chain of command involved in the event of a large-scale cyber event. In order to manage the interruption of part of the world financial services, foreseen in the scenario, the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), the only community that deals exclusively with cyber intelligence on financial services. Important elements deriving from the pandemic still in progress were introduced into the scenario, such as the increase in teleworking and the increase in online services.

Like all competitions there is a ranking and a winner. This year it was the Sweden to get the best score, followed by Finland in second position and from Czech Republic in third. 

Congratulations to the respective teams for the excellent result!

After the congratulations to the winners, it's time for some brief general considerations.

To begin with, as Italians we ask ourselves what our team did, as long as it participated.

Second question: what happened to the countries considered by all to be the most advanced in the sector? Where are the United States, the United Kingdom, France ... to name but a few? 

We are aware that this is an exercise and should be taken as such, but if it really is the largest cyber tutorial in the world (Western) one should expect a different ranking!

But so be it! Maybe we're wrong ... 

Waiting for more information, congratulations to the winners again. Well done!  

PS The Locked Shields 2021 exercise was organized by CCDCOE, in cooperation with NATO Communications and Information Agency, Estonian Ministry of Defense, Estonian Defense Forces, Siemens, Ericsson, TalTech, Foundation CR14, Bittium, Clarified Security, Arctic Security, Cisco , Stamus Networks, VMware, SpaceIT, Sentinel, Financial Service Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), US Defense Innovation Unit, Microsoft, Atech, Avibras, SUTD iTrust Singapore, The European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, European Defense Agency, Space ISAC, US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), STM, VTT Technical Research Center of Finland Ltd, NATO M&S COE and PaloAlto networks. 

To learn more:

https://ccdcoe.org/news/2021/sweden-scored-highest-at-the-cyber-defence-...

https://news.err.ee/1608174550/locked-shields-2021-largest-cyber-defense...

https://www.securitylab.ru/news/519009.php

https://honvedelem.hu/hirek/locked-shields-2021-tobbnemzeti-kibervedelmi...

https://balticword.com/worlds-largest-international-live-fire-cyber-exer...

FS-ISAC Leads Financial Sector in World's Largest International Live-Fire Cyber ​​Exercise

France imposes itself on the Locked Shield 2019 - Online Defense

Photo: NATO Cooperative Cyber ​​Defense Center of Excellence