Tallinn hosted NATO cyber exercises with the participation of 30 states

Representatives of 30 countries took part yesterday in cyber exercises organized by the NATO Cyber ​​Defense Cooperation Center in Tallinn. Among other things, during the competition, the protection of power systems was practiced, writes err.ee.

The correspondent of Estonian Television and Radio Broadcasting, who was present at the event, said that “from the outside, it seems that this is some kind of computer game – only 1500 people from 30 countries are playing it”.

“If everything is in order, then all the street lights are on, everything is normal. But the peculiarity here is that the arrows show whether we can transfer the tension from one country to another”, – explained Raimo Peterson, an expert at the NATO Cyber ​​Cooperation Center.

“On the next screen, other vital systems are displayed – water treatment, airspace protection, satellite images.

“One of the teams sees a picture of the ocean where pollution is noticeable. According to the script, this is a sign that the plane fell into the water”, – added Peterson. It all looks like a game, but it’s actually quite serious. For example, the safety of power plants became the topic of the exercises after Ukraine became the target of cyberattacks against its energy infrastructure”, – the correspondent explains.

“The attackers managed to disable the entire control system. And the easiest and most reliable way to restore everything was that the electrical engineers themselves drove around all the substations and turned everything on manually. But at the same time, about 200,000 people were left without electricity in the middle of winter”, – says Peterson.

Not only NATO countries took part in the exercises. The first and second places in the competition were shared by Sweden and Finland. Among the participants were also Japan and South Korea.

Recall that the NATO cyber defense center operating in Estonia is the largest among similar organizations of the alliance in terms of the number of members.

Tallinn hosted NATO cyber exercises with the participation of 30 states