Currently, the two sides hold separate cyber-incident exercises. The Department of Homeland Security runs its annual Cyber Storm exercise that simulates large-scale cyberattacks on the US government and US critical infrastructure. The EU just began holding a pan-European cyber-incident exercise called Cyber Europe last year.
The US and EU also agreed to work with the private sector in fighting cybercrime, including taking down botnets and beefing up security on critical infrastructure and the internet. They agreed to a program for countries outside the EU to become parties to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime and to expand cooperation in implementing the convention’s standards. The convention harmonizes national laws dealing with cybercrime, and requires members to meet certain standards for investing and prosecuting cybercrime.
In addition, the two sides agreed to cooperate in protecting children online, including sponsoring a conference on the subject in Silicon Valley by the end of 2011. They pledge to continue efforts to combat online child pornography that include working with domain-name registrars and registries to shut down sites.
This broad cybersecurity agenda will be carried out by the EU-US Working Group on Cybersecurity and Cybercrime set up at the EU-US Summit held in Lisbon in November of last year. The agenda was agreed to during a meeting this week between Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice president for the digital agenda, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, and US Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano.