Hosted by the NATO Cyber Defense Centre, an opportunity to strengthen national response capabilities

The National Intelligence Service is participating in 'Locked Shields 2022,' the world's largest cyberattack and defense exercise, to strengthen national response capabilities against cyber security threats.

To participate in the training, the National Intelligence Service formed a joint team of about 70 people from eight civilian, government, and military agencies, including the Ministry of National Defense, Korea Electric Power Corporation, and the Financial Security Institute, last February, and will compete online with about 30 teams from member countries of the NATO Cyber Defence Centre from April 19 to 22.

Locked Shields is a multinational cyber exercise hosted annually by the NATO Cyber Defence Centre since 2012 to strengthen cooperation among member states in responding to cyber crises, with over 2,000 cyber attack and defense experts from more than 30 countries participating. (South Korea joined as a member in 2019.)

The training is conducted in 'technical training' and 'strategic training' according to a 'cyber engagement between nations' scenario. In the technical training, each participating team defends against attacks by NATO cyber attack teams in eight fields, including satellite communications, power, air defense, and finance. The evaluation proceeds in a way that points are lost if the defense fails and the system goes down, and points are gained if the defense succeeds.

Strategic training evaluates various policy elements of the response process, such as situation reporting and sharing by participating teams, command procedures, and legal and media strategies, in the event of a cyber attack.

An official from the National Intelligence Service stated, “The ‘Locked Shields’ exercise is a valuable opportunity to strengthen national-level response capabilities against cyber security threats through cooperation among relevant agencies,” adding, “We expect our cyber defense capabilities to be upgraded to the next level through this exercise.”

Meanwhile, the National Intelligence Service is actively working to respond to increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, such as hosting the "Cyber Attack Defense Competition," a Korean version of "Locked Shields," every year since 2017 (with a total of 282 teams from the private, government, military, and overseas participating last year).