“Synergy”- Cyber Security Exercise
Recently Computer Emergency Response Team – India (CERT-In) successfully designed and conducted cyber security exercise “Synergy” with 13 countries as part of ‘International Counter Ransomware Initiative’.
The exercise was conducted as part of the ‘International Counter Ransomware Initiative- Resilience Working Group’, which is led by the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) in India.
Computer Emergency Response Team – India (CERT-In):
- Computer Emergency Response Team – India (CERT-In), is an organization of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology with an aim to secure the Indian cyber sector.
- It is a nodal agency that deals with cyber security threats like hacking and phishing.
- This organization collects, analyzes and disseminates information on cyber incidents, as well as issues alerts on cyber security incidents.
- CERT-In provides incident prevention and response services as well as security quality management services.
Synergy-
- Synergy is a cyber security exercise, successfully designed and conducted by CERT-In in collaboration with Cyber Security Agency (CSA) of Singapore.
- This exercise scenario was drawn from real-life cyber incidents, in which an incident of domestic (with limited impact) ransomware escalates into a global cyber security crisis.
- Each State participated as a National Crisis Management Team consisting of people from various government agencies including National CERT/CSIRT, Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA), Ministry of Communications and IT/ICT and Security Agencies.
Objective-
- To assess, exchange and improve various strategies and methodologies among member-states to build a strong network against cyber attacks aimed at ransomware and extortion.
- Theme: “Building a Strong Network to Fight Ransomware Attacks”
Ransomware:
- Ransomware is malware designed to deny a user or organization access to files on their computer.
- By encrypting these files and demanding a ransom payment for the decryption key, cyber attackers put organizations in a position where paying a ransom is the easiest and cheapest way to gain access to their files.
Source – The Hindu
