CERT-RO participates in Blue OLEx 2020 exercise; 2021 event to be hosted by Romania

The National Cyber Security Incident Response Center (CERT-RO) participated, on Tuesday, in the second edition of Blue OLEx 2020, a table-top exercise dedicated to cyber security crises at European level, which will be organized next year by Romania, according to a press release of the institution, sent to AGERPRES.

Blue OLEx is a high-level event, organized every year by one of the member states.

The first edition of the exercise was organized by France, while this year's edition was hosted by the Netherlands.

"This year's edition took place online and aimed to strengthen the relationship within the cyber security community at executive level, as well as to raise awareness of the situation and the exchange of good practices. The event ended with a discussion at the level of the heads of security authorities in the EU member states, which addressed a set of initiatives in the field of crisis management at European level," the CERT-RO release reads.

According to the quoted source, on the occasion of the event in the Netherlands, the new cooperation network Cyber Crises Liaison Organization Network (CyCLONe) was launched, which is the result of the efforts of the NIS Cooperation Group, where Romania had an important contribution.

The purpose of CyCLONe is to implement the European Commission's Emergency Response Plan in the event of a large-scale cross-border incident or cyber crisis (Blueprint). The novelty of CyCLONe is that it generates the premises for achieving synergies between the technical, operational and political levels in crisis situations.

At this year's event, the general director of CERT-RO, Dan Cimpean, participated as moderator of one of the five working groups, and at the end of the event he presented some ideas regarding next year's edition of the exercise and the meeting of the heads cyber security authorities, which will be hosted by Romania.