G20 Cyber Security Exercise and Drill, 2023
31st January 2023
Mr. Hansraj Yadav (Associate Professor) from Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurugram attended “G20 Cyber Security Exercise and Drill, 2023” at Silver Oak, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on 31st January, 2023. The event was conducted by The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of the Government of India.
Shri Alkesh Kumar Sharma {(Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) (MeitY)}, inaugurated the G20 Cyber Security Exercise and Drill. More than 400 domestic and international participants under India’s G20 presidency participated in the event. Afterwards, Dr. Sanjay Bahl (Director General, CERT-In) welcomed the participants and setup the context for the exercise and drill through an enlightened speech.
Under G20 India’s presidency, CERT-In with AICTE conducted Cyber Security Exercise & Drill for Indian entities. CERT-In is a functional organization of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, with the objective of securing Indian cyber space. CERT-In provides Incident Prevention and Response services as well as Security Quality Management Services. CERT also conducts on-going public awareness campaigns and engages in research aimed at improving security systems.
The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) conducted this Cyber Security Exercise and drill in hybrid mode (Physical and Virtual) where international participants from more than 12 countries joined through online mode while domestic participants from diverse sectors such as Finance, Education, Telecom, Ports & Shipping, Energy, IT/ITeS and others attended in-person as well as through virtual mode.
In his keynote address, Shri Alkesh Kumar Sharma highlighted the fact that cyber incidents are increasingly becoming sophisticated & disrupting affecting not only a nation but having trans-national impact and there is an urgent need to work collectively to build joint resilience to counter cyber-attacks.
Commander Chris Waters, Regional Director South Asia, Australia; Mr. Abdul-Hakeem Ajijola (AhA), Global Cyber security professionals’ influencers and thought leader, Nigeria; and Mr. Martin Stewart, First Secretary Cyber Security, UK also addressed the participants and shared their experience & insights on effective ways for communities to deal with cyber threats.
The event further progressed with conducting of Strategic Table Top Exercise (TTX) and Operational Drill using CERT-In Exercise Platform.
The first Table Top Exercise catered to Board & Top Management on the theme “Synergy to counter Global Cyber Crisis” focused on “Crisis Management & Crisis Communication”. The second Table Top Exercise, an Operational Drill was designed for CISO and Mid-management on the theme “Building Collective Cyber Resilience”. The moderator of the exercise was Shri Ashutosh Bahuguna, Scientist ‘E’ CERT-In. The scenario for the exercise, which included cyber extortion, data breach, supply chain attacks and disruptions were derived from real life cyber incidents, in which domestic level (limited impact) incidents escalated to global cyber security threats.
Exercise was successful in meeting its objectives and provided insights on enhancing and improving Crisis Management, Crisis Communication, Incident Response and Global Coordination & Cooperation. Vote of Thanks was given by Shri S.S. Sarma, Scientist ‘G’, CERT-In.