APAC emergency response teams in drills with OIC, Euro counterparts

• 16 economies from APCERT, plus OIC members and Germany, took part in drill
• Teams activated and tested their incident response handling arrangements in exercise

THE Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT) has just concluded its annual drill to test the response capability of the leading Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) from Asia Pacific economies.
 
The drill for the first time involved the participation of the European Government CSIRTs group (EGC), CyberSecurity Malaysia (CSM) said in a statement.
 
For the third consecutive year, the annual drill also involved the participation of members from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation – Computer Emergency Response Team (OIC-CERT).
 
In the drill, participating teams activated and tested their incident response handling arrangements. This included the need to interact between CSIRTs/ CERTs locally and from abroad, in order to dismantle the Denial of Service (DoS) infrastructure from an analysis of a malicious smartphone application.
 
This incident response exercise reflects the strong collaboration amongst the participating economies and validates the enhanced communication protocols, technical capabilities and quality of incident responses that CSIRT fosters in assuring Internet security and safety, CSM said in its statement.
 
CSM, Malaysia’s national specialist centre for cyber-security, said that 20 CSIRT teams from 16 economies in APCERT; three CSIRT teams of the OIC-CERT (Egypt, Pakistan, and Nigeria); and a CSIRT from Germany of the EGC participated in the drill.
 
The APCERT economies that took part were Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, China, Taipei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Macao, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia are also members of OIC-CERT.
 
“The participation and involvement of OIC-CERT members in the annual cyber-exercise has increased their capability and ability to address and mitigate cyber-security issues and threats,” said OIC-CERT chairman Badar Ali Al-Salehi.
 
“In addition, [the drill] also strengthens bilateral relationships and establishes closer cooperation between OIC-CERT and APCERT. We are certainly delighted to be given the opportunity to collaborate and participate in such a prestige programme,” added Badar, also the Director General of the Oman National CERT.
 
The theme of the drill, also known as APCERT Drill 2014, was Countering Cyber-ops with Regional Coordination.
 
“The OIC-CERT has undertaken various effective strategies to provide the necessary training and capacity-building programmes in order to develop technical capabilities in the area of cyber-security among member countries,” said CSM chairman General Mohd Azumi Mohamed (Rtd) (pic).
 
“Thus, the involvement in the drill is aligned with OIC-CERT objectives that strengthen relationships among the OIC member countries in mitigating cyber-threats,” added Mohd Azumi, also advisor to the Chair of the OIC-CERT.
 
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