The table-top exercise, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), is using simulated scenarios to explore how the EU and US would cooperate in the event of cyberattacks on their critical infrastructure.
In the first scenario, an advanced persistent threat attack attempts to steal and publish secret information from EU nations' cybersecurity agencies. The second simulation focuses on the disruption of industrial control systems, known as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, in power generation plants.
More than 20 EU nations are involved in the exercise, with the European Commission providing high-level direction. Cyber Atlantic 2011 is part of a commitment to cybersecurity made at the EU-US summit in Lisbon on Nov. 20, 2010. In April, the two sides announced an agreement to run a joint cybersecurity exercise by the end of 2011.
Each side has held its own cybersecurity exercises in the past. DHS has sponsored three Cyber Storm exercises, the latest held a year ago in October. The EU held its first pan-European cybersecurity exercise, called Cyber Europe, last November.
Lessons learned from Cyber Atlantic 2011 will be used to plan further joint EU-US cyber exercises in the future, ENISA said.