Lessons Learned from NATO’s Cyber Defence exercise Locked Shields 2015

The increased focus on Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition/ Industrial Control Systems (SCADA/ICS) in the military domain will lead to measures for improving cyber-physical security and the development of operational capabilities. For the member states of NATO exercises in the cyber-physical field contribute to this process and to the exchange of experiences and skills. A team consisting of members of the German Bundeswehr and the Dutch Defence Computer Emergency Response Team (DefCERT), gained 10th place overall in Locked Shields 2015. In the forensic challenge, a separate part in the exercise, a 3rd place was obtained. SCADA/ICS was an element of the complete exercise, unlike forensics which was a separate challenge. This team was rewarded for not only protecting their own SCADA/ICS element, but all the other teams as well. However the protection for the other teams was reverted to provide the opportunity for the other teams to do a meaningful exercise on SCADA/ICS. The world’s largest cyber exercise was informative and generated many lessons learned