British Navy Combines With The Japanese Military To Counter Cyber Attacks
UK’s Royal Navy (RN) specialists joined forces with Japanese counterparts in Tokyo to fend off cyber-attacks during a large-scale cyber battle exercise.
Forty-one teams from 17 nations tested their cyber defence skills during the British Army’s annual Cyber Marvel exercise in Estonia, with an international network plugging in from across three continents.
Cyber Marvel is a test of deception and mental agility, designed to stretch the most experienced cyber specialists, allowing allies and partners to learn and sharpen skills together. Hosted at NATO’s Cyber Range, international participants dialled in from Kenya, Singapore, Philippines, India, Indonesia and Brunei and, in the Royal Navy’s case, Japan.
The Royal Navy’s cyber operations specialists based in Portsmouth are usually on the front line across the world, protecting ships and bases from threats around the clock, but were deployed to Tokyo for this valuable exercise. This year, for the first time, they formed a joint team with the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force’s (JMSDF) Communication Security Group.
The 22-strong team, 12 from the RN and 10 from JMSDF, were given the mission of protecting an island in the Indo-Pacific region facing aggressive cyber attacks from a ‘hostile’ nation state.
The cyber battle, which increased in its complexity throughout, helped forge closer bonds and understanding between Japanese and British personnel as they prepare to work with each other next year as the UK deploys its Carrier Strike Group to the region.
Lieutenant Commander Paul Adkins, in charge of the RN team, said: “Our participation in the exercise with the Communications Support Group based in Tokyo represents a culmination of activity that only came into being last year; but has already cemented an enduring relationship with our friends in the JMSDF. “Together we have refined and developed joint tactics and procedures that have borne fruit now, but more importantly, will serve us well in the future, particularly as we look to provide cyber assurance to CSG deployment 2025. Here we look forward to continued engagement with the Japanese Defense Forces”.
- Each ‘blue’ team is scored on the success of its defence against attackers’ (the hostile red teams), system availability, command briefing quality, situational and reports as well as side challenges which included Digital Forensics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Quantum Computing.
- The exercise created government, hospital, power plant and military networks, with the team defending critical national infrastructure from increasingly sophisticated attacks ensuring maximum availability, removing exploited vulnerabilities, and eradicating malicious actors from the networks.
The joint team regularly reported to an Australian chain of command throughout the scenario and successfully maintained 100 per cent availability of Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), repeatedly removing malicious access and artifacts throughout the country’s infrastructure.
The joint RN/JMSDF team were judged to have performed strongly, finishing sixth overall
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