A huge achievement of the Polish cyber experts in the Locked Shields 2023! Polish National Blue Team – which I was a part of – is among the best in the world, coming 3rd in the NATO CCDCOE’s cyber defense exercise.

Locked Shields, which took place on April 18-21, is an annual NATO CCDCOE cyber defense exercise designed to test and improve the preparedness of member nations and partners against large-scale cyber-attacks.

It enables cyber security experts to enhance their skills in defending national IT systems and critical infrastructure under real-time attacks. Their task this year was to defend the fictional country Berylia, experiencing a deteriorating security situation. 

Teams worked under a lot of pressure, at a high pace and dynamics to fight off a series of sophisticated hacking attacks carried out by the organizers.

Over 8 thousand real-time cyberattacks were aimed at military and energy systems, water treatment installations, 5G telephony and air defense systems. One of the most critical components that the Blue Teams had to defend was the financial sector – an integral part of a country’s critical infrastructure.

Over 3 thousand experts from 38 countries participated in this year’s Locked Shields exercises.

The Polish National Team was the best in categories related to reporting information on threats (Cyber Threat Intelligence) and reporting irregularities to the so-called Green Team. It also achieved the highest score in the service availability category.

Hats off to the Polish National Team with the lead from Cyberspace Defense Forces.