The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has hosted a major international cybercrime response exercise designed to test how effectively multiple agencies can react to a simulated cyber attack.
Exercise Silver Shadow was funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) with backing from the Home Office, with officers from the FBI as well as Bulgaria, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine taking part.
The exercise was an opportunity to assess their ability to respond collectively to an incident at a fictitious international petroleum company, whilst building stronger inter-agency partnerships in the process.
Silver Shadow took place over the week of 30 November at the Cabinet Office’s Emergency Planning College in North Yorkshire—run by private sector firm, Serco.
Serco’s cybersecurity training and exercise platform cybX was used to stage the exercise, which also featured a representative from Europol’s Joint Cyber Action Taskforce (J-CAT).
The news follows a pilot exercise which was held back in October to assess the ability of the UK’s domestic cybercrime units to respond to an incident.
These included the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit and cyber units within the country’s Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs), Police Scotland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
NCCU director, Jamie Saunders, argued that strong international partnerships are at the heart of the unit’s efforts to better combat serious cybercrime threats to the UK.
“Cybercrime is by its very nature international, with many of the criminals and the technical infrastructure they rely upon based overseas, and yet its impact is felt by real people and real businesses in communities across the UK,” he added in a statement.
“This means that our response has to be capable of linking police colleagues dealing with victims at a local level with law enforcement colleagues in other countries investigating and prosecuting those who may be responsible.”
This isn’t the first time law enforcers from across the globe have come together to fight cybercrime.
The UK took part in a major anti-piracy operation involving 27 countries in the run up to Black Friday.
Photo © Gwoeli