Dutch banking takes courage from cybercrime exercises
The Dutch have led the defence in a simulated cyberassault that mirrored the infamous WannaCry ransomware attack of 2016.
The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (FS-ISAC) launched its global business and resilience cyber exercises in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
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The exercise was hosted by Dutch bank ING and mimicked an online attack on a real-world bank network environment.
Financial institutions included the Dutch Payments Association and the Association of Financial Markets in Europe (AFME), and the exercise tested how network defenders organised and communicated among themselves to varying degrees of success.
You may recall the WannaCry attack – it was estimated to have affected more than 200,000 computers across 150 countries and caused damage estimated in the billions of dollars.
“The cyber-range exercise was a great step forward for the launch of the exercise programme in EMEA,” says Vincent Thiele, head of cybercrime expertise and response team at ING Bank and FS-ISAC board member.
The exercises enable members to develop best practices and help with crisis response coordination.
This included a “cyberattack against payment systems” (CAPS), an annual virtual exercise aimed at payment companies, free to all regulated financial institutions in EMEA, Asia Pacific and the Americas. A similar one was also done for the insurance sector.
FS-ISAC is a non-profit corporation that was established in 1999 and is funded by its 7,000-member firms headquartered in 45 countries with users in 72 countries.
