The EU MilCERT Interoperability Conference 2021, organised by EDA and launched early this year to improve European cooperation between Member States’ national Military Computer Emergency Response Teams (MilCERTs), will be completed this week with a two-day ‘strategic’ part (8/9 June) which was opened today by EDA Chief Executive Jiří Šedivý.
The practical track of the conference, the first ever live-fire cyber exercise for MilCERTS, was held in February and gathered more than 200 experts from 17 EDA Member States and Switzerland. This week’s strategic event will focus on the lessons learnt from the practical exercise and discuss more strategic topics.
The EU MilCERT Interoperability Conference 2021 (MIC) seeks to initiate the establishment of a permanent forum for discussing information sharing within the EU Network of Military Computer Emergency Response Teams. The expectation is that this conference - and potential future follow-up events - will help to create a more detailed understanding of the challenges and ultimately lay the groundwork to improve information-sharing without undermining the strategic importance of classification.
In his opening remarks, EDA Chief Executive Jiří Šedivý stressed that the conference was only possible thanks to the very active engagement of the Member States, both in the technical and strategic track: “It is my conviction that we are taking all together the right way towards a stronger cooperation between the military CERTs in Europe”. It is well known that the EU is facing many challenges and threats in cyberspace and that CERTs report an increasing number of attacks on a daily basis, Mr Šedivý said. “That is why the EU has conducted a comprehensive key threat analysis from global and regional perspectives and is preparing a Strategic Compass to strengthen a common European security and defence culture and guide the achievement of its level of ambition. I’m convinced that the interaction and discussions during MIC 2021 will be very useful to inform the related work under the Strategic Compass”, he stated.
Background
The EU MilCERT Interoperability Conference 2021 is organised in two tracks, technical and strategic. The first technical track took place on 16/18 February 2021 and focused on a 3-days cyber defence live-fire exercise, with the aim to establish a collaboration channel between technical teams of the interested Member States. More than 200 cyber defence experts from pMS’ milCERTs participated in the exercise. The technical game was focused on the expert level as a capture the flag game.
This week’s strategic track follows-up on the practical part and addresses the heads of the Computer Emergency Response Teams with strategic topics. It consists of several online events, with keynotes delivered by high-profile stakeholders, interactive incidents and discussions between the participants. It aims to build confidence and foster cooperation and information sharing.
Planning for a second iteration of the EU MilCERT Interoperability Conference is already underway in cooperation with the upcoming Slovenian and French EU Council Presidencies.