Jordan to host cross border cybersecurity drill

PanARMENIAN.Net - The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and its cybersecurity partner, the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (IMPACT), are organizing the first UN-backed cross border cyber drill designed to test the Arab region’s cyber response capabilities and improve readiness and reaction in the event of a theoretical future cyber attack, ITU said in a press release.

The cyber drill is the second in a series of ITU-IMPACT events being held around the world to help countries strengthen their cybersecurity frameworks. The first was held in Southeast Asia region in December 2011, involving Cambodia, Lao P.D.R., Myanmar and Viet Nam.

The drill forms part of an ITU-IMPACT Arab region cybersecurity workshop, to be held in Amman, Jordan from July 15-17, and hosted by Jordan’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology.

More than ten Arab States will participate in the workshop, which will address key topics such as botnets, Child Online Protection (COP) and mobile security. The third day of the event will feature the ITU-IMPACT Applied Learning for Emergency Response Team (ALERT) cyber drill, which will see teams from six Arab countries, along with ITU-IMPACT’s own cybersecurity experts, take part in a simulated and coordinated exercise to assess the cybersecurity emergency readiness of each country and their incident response capabilities in mitigating and countering cyber attacks.

The workshop aims to equip participants with expert professional knowledge of cyber incident response and handling, network and web security, malware analysis and the steps needed to establish effective national Computer Incident Response Teams (CIRTs). Participants will also be exposed to various cybersecurity scenarios based on case studies and practical work. The workshop aspires to nurture a culture of information security and assist in developing technical capabilities on CIRT operations, and improve overall cybersecurity readiness across the region.

The drill and workshop are being held in collaboration with ITU-IMPACT's key industry partners, including ABI Research, The Cyber Guardian and Kaspersky Lab, along with the support of other ITU-IMPACT partners including Trend Micro and F-Secure.