Nato move a sign of security issues

Nato has led the largest global cyber manoeuvre of all-time, demonstrating the increasing significance of cyber warfare today.

With over 300 people and teams representing  17 countries, the drill – known as Locked Shields – occurred in March but has been kept under lock and key until now.

In a pretend cyber-attack situation, teams from Lithuania, Austria, France, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Poland, Turkey, Holland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Finland and Estonia, along with Nato’s global cyber-response unit, were forced to fend off anonymous cyber attackers.

The players had to pretend they were defending a fictitious country known as Berylia, squared off against 50 computer experts who simulated a complex cyber-attack.

The aim of the exercise was to find the attackers’ identities – in this situation, a rival make-believe country named Crimsonia launched the attack.

Ragnar Rattas, from the Estonian Information System Authority, said:

“It was very challenging. They were very sophisticated attacks. There were times when you just wanted to close the computer and walk away.”

The contest was only one part of a larger scheme by Nato to both test and improve its ability to defend against attacks in the digital realm.

Nato’s timing is telling, indicating that vigilance should be the order of the day when it comes to cyber assaults. Businesses need to be alert to such attacks by having intelligent security staff on post – if need be, ramping up their IT security recruitment campaign. The additional wages far outweigh the possible consequences of an attack.