The Estonian-French and Latvian-NATO teams have been singled out as the top achievers too. For the first time in the 14-edition history of the exercise, the top-3 was only officially announced as a group so far, without singling out the 1st place winner and the runner-ups. It is not clear yet if the detailed standings will be published after all, or will the final result stand as an ex-aequo win of the three best teams.
As emphasised by Lt. Col. Przemysław Lipczyński, the spokesman for Poland's Cyber Defence Forces - the real goal of the event is to test the teams' actual skills in a cyberwar situation. However, every participant wants to turn out the winner, so the teams are still waiting for the final results to be announced. "Each of our team members gave their all, and we are optimistic because before the official end of the exercise we had a significant advantage over other teams" - Lipczyński said, speaking for Polish Press Agency PAP.
When asked about cooperation with the Finns, the spokesman replied: "Cooperation with Finland during the 'Locked Shields' was exemplary. We understood each other without words. We acted as one organism. Exercises such as Locked Shields are also proof that, if necessary, we are able to quickly join forces with our allies and respond to cyber threats together".
In this year's edition of the exercise, the participants played the role of Rapid Response Teams. Their task was to defend a fictitious country - Berylia - against mass attacks on IT systems and critical infrastructure. "The teams had to, in real time, repel attacks on, among others, banking systems, power plants, satellite communications, 5G networks, cloud solutions, air defence systems and industrial networks" - Lt. Col. Lipczyński explained.
The Polish-Finnish team, led by an officer of Poland's Cyber Defence Forces, was composed of experts from the public, private and academic sectors. As Lt. Col. Lipczyński explained, the pressure during the competition is enormous. "Several thousand virtual systems were created in a simulated environment, and several thousand real-time attacks were carried out over several dozen hours" - he emphasised, underlining the difficulty of the task handled in nearly flawless manner by the Polish-Finnish team.
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Source: PAP