The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the UAE Cyber Security Council launched the Global CyberDrill at GISEC 2024 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from 23 to 25 April 2024. Its aim was to bring together national cybersecurity authorities, security agencies and CERTs/CIRTs/CSIRTs from 108 countries to build global cooperation and partnerships against cyber threats. Timor-Leste also took part, represented by Mr Fábio de Magalhães and Mr Pio Clemente S. Tilman, technical regulators at the Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações.
The event focused on the important role that national cybersecurity centres and computer emergency response teams (CERTs) around the world play in building cyber resilience and protecting critical information infrastructure.
Global CyberDrill 2024 in Dubai received a Guinness World Record as the world's largest cyber exercise, with 108 countries invited. There was also an exhibition with more than 750 vendors showing their technology, prototypes and ideas; a conference where more than 350 industry leaders, well-known experts and cybersecurity enthusiasts met to explore new trends, share information and look at innovation in cybersecurity; and training and seminars led by experienced professionals, through the GISEC Global training sessions, which gave a unique chance to go deep into specific areas of cybersecurity and get practical experience.
The first day was open to CSIRTs, government, regulators, telecom operators, universities, academia, telecom equipment makers, research and design institutes, software developers and other stakeholders from ITU Member States. The first session was about Global Cyber Resilience: Strengthening International Collaboration for a Secure and Interconnected World, the second session was about Advancing Cyber Diplomacy: Perspectives from Incident Response and Diplomatic Communities on UN Cybersecurity Norms and their Implementation and the third session was about The Role of Intergovernmental and International Organizations in Countering Cyber Threats.
The second day was open to team members from national cybersecurity authorities and agencies, and from CSIRTs/CERTs/CIRTs. The Global CyberDrill exercises were run through scenarios. The first scenario was "APT DFIR and Threat Hunting" led by Mr Marwan Ben Rached, as Cybersecurity Coordinator, ITU, and Mr Digit Oktavianto, as Cybersecurity Consultant, ITU. The exercise was run on the platform Cyber Ranges and the winner of this scenario was Egypt.
The second scenario was "Cyber Incident Response, Analysis, Recovery and Cooperation with law enforcement" led by Ms Alya Al-Saadi, as Cybercrime Programme Coordinator and Mr Ibrahim Al-Mahmoud, as Cyber Capabilities Development Coordinator The winner of this exercise was Albania, and Timor-Leste came ninth out of the 108 participating countries.
The third scenario was The use of OSINT Techniques to Identify Perpetrators of Cyber- Attacks led by Mr Endrik Raun, Programme Management Officer, UNCCT, and Mr Christofis Lysandrou Pallaris, consultant, UNCCT. Albania won this exercise too.
Globál CyberDrill 2024 was built around four main themes:
- Reflect: bring the global cybersecurity community together to review global and regional cybersecurity trends and look at improvements based on the five pillars of the Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA) and the Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI).
- Share: promote and share knowledge about useful communication networks, and exchange funded resources.
- Learn: build the capacity of CSIRT communities in incident response and critical information infrastructure protection (CIIP).
- Practise: test operational resilience through key concepts of the CSIRT/CIRT/CERT community.
