Over 75 Romanian specialists coordinated by Cybernetic Defence Agency, the Cybernetic Defence Command, Ministry of National Defence acting at the Center for Excellence in Advanced Cyber Security Technology at the Military Technical Academy in Bucharest participate in the most important cyber defense exercise organized by NATO, Cyber Coalition 2019, conducted over 2-5 December, with the Coordination Center in Tartu, Estonia.

The Romanian team consists of representatives of Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Foreign Intelligence Service, Protection and Guard Service, Romanian Intelligence Service, Special Telecommunications Service, CERT-RO (Response Center for National Cyber Security Incidents) as well as experts working at cyber security private companies: Bitdefender, Certsign, Oracle, Provision, Safetech, and SecureWorks.

The exercise is planned by the Allied Command Transformation and conducted by NATO's Military Committee, and aims at training and testing the Alliance capability in defending its most important infrastructure facilities against third party threats, when operating in a field challenged by cybernetic confrontations.

The event is attended by representatives from all member countries of the Alliance, NATO Communications and Information Technology Agency, NATO Center of Excellence for Cybernetic Defence, representatives both from the military and from the private and academic fields as well as specialists from the non-NATO member countries. It is a distributed-system exercise, each nation participating with its team by securely connecting to the cybernetic network provided by the Estonian Ministry of Defense and configured for this exercise by the CyberInt Center of the Romanian Intelligence Service.

The main goal of the exercise is to enhance coordination and collaboration between NATO and its Allies, by practicing procedures and rapid response measures in case of cybernetic defence incidents. The experts use their technical abilities in managing a series of scenarios which have become very complex over the last years. Using a virtually controlled environment, all participants have to solve scenarios that involve complex vulnerabilities, threats and risks and have to come up with solutions.

The Press Office