ITU undertakes world’s first cross border cyber drill

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (IMPACT) on December 1, 2011 held the world’s first cross border cyber drill exercise in South East Asia.

According to the ITU, the cyber drill was a simulated and coordinated exercise to assess the cybersecurity emergency readiness of CLMV countries and their incident response capabilities in mitigating and countering cyberattacks.

The exercise helped build greater international cooperation between participating countries, and improved their communication and mitigation processes, according to the ITU in a press release copied to ghanabusinessnews.com.

The participating countries were Cambodia, Lao P.D.R and Myanmar.

“Drill scenarios involved three cybersecurity emergency incidents: mass web defacement, spam and malware infection… Teams were required to identify the origin of the attacks, identify possible solutions and mitigation steps, and rectify the defacement and/or outbreak. All events and incidents were simulated – no live systems were attacked,” said the UN agency.

“Cyberattacks are borderless, so it is vital for every CERT/CIRT to share information and experience on cross-border incident handling, in order to refine and test points of contact and procedures, to enhance the effectiveness of their response to active cyberthreats”, said ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré.

By Ekow Quandzie