The Joint Cyberspace Command leads the Spanish team in the exercise 'Locked Shield 2022'

•  The team is made up of national and foreign military and civilians from the public and private sectors

The Joint Cyberspace Command (JCC) is coordinating the Spanish team engaged in the 'Locked Shield 22' exercise. This technical exercise, which will last three days, began on Wednesday 20^th and consists of two groups confronting each other in cyberspace.

The 'Locked Shields' cyber exercise is recognised as one of the world's leading cyber defence ones. It is conducted annually by NATO's Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCD CoE) in Tallinn (Estonia) and is targeted at training Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), also known as CSIRTs in Europe, who are deployed to unknown networks with limited time to acquaint themselves with them.

Spain, a founding partner of the CDC COE and a member of its Steering Committee, has been involved in the exercise since 2010. Our nation is participating in this 2022 edition with a mixed team of civilian and military personnel, along with representatives of the Brazilian Cyber Defence Command. Led by the JCC, in addition to the Army, Air Force and Navy, the national team is made up of personnel from the National Police and the Guardia Civil. On the civilian side, in addition to technicians from the National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE) and the National Cryptologic Centre (CCN), there are professionals from technological companies, such as Telefónica, Siemens and Indra, and personnel from the academic world.

The concept of the exercise is a real-time 'battle' involving two technical teams: one for defence (Blue Team - BT) and the other for attackers (Red Team - RT). The BT is an alliance of nations that help a fictitious nation, member of that alliance, to defend its computer systems from cyber-attacks perpetrated by the RT on an ongoing basis.

It is a contest where the Blue Team's mission is to understand and assess the situation, maintain the availability, confidentiality and integrity of services in the simulated networks that have suffered cyber-attacks.

To increase awareness and skills at all levels, the exercise includes forensic, legal, media, strategic communication and other exercises.

The drill engages more than 2000 individuals from 32 nations, who, divided into 24 teams (BTs) with an average of 50 experts each, defend a nation's systems against attacks by a group of hackers.

The national team includes roughly 60 people, about 20 of whom belong to the MCCE. Without the cooperation of personnel from the armed forces and other agencies and companies, it would have been quite difficult to participate in this exercise.