The National Joint Cyber Warfare Exercise “PANOPTIS 2023” was completed on Friday, October 23, 2023. The exercise kicked off on Monday, October 23, 2023 and was conducted under the coordination of the Cyber Warfare Directorate of the Hellenic National Defence General Staff (HNDGS). It took place with the participation of personnel of the Hellenic Armed Forces, the Security Forces, national critical infrastructure management bodies, public and private agencies, academia as well as Cyber Warfare Departments of the Armed Forces of Cyprus and France.

According to a relevant announcement of the HNDGS, more than 50 officers from the Hellenic Armed Forces and 200 people from 37 agencies of the wider public and private sector participated in the exercise. The aforesaid had the opportunity to train in management procedures of cyber attacks at the national level as well as in identifying and responding to various cyber security incidents, which covered both isolated incidents and incidents of a wider extent that required a coordinated response at multiple levels.

In particular, the incidents involved many aspects of cyber defence, such as malware analysis, digital investigation of evidence on different computer operating systems, routers, Internet and web application vulnerability testing as well as network infrastructure breach detection and analysis.

The cyber security training of the participants in “PANOPTIS 2023” is one of the actions of HNDGS to effectively address the security challenges and threats, which have arisen from the continuous increase in cyber attacks, and the enhancement of cyber warfare capabilities.

It is pointed out that in addition to its decisive contribution to the effective strengthening of cyber security and protection of the Hellenic Armed Forces, through the Joint Center for Cyber Warfare Operations and its modern infrastructures, and in coordination with the competent state agencies, mainly the Ministry of Digital Governance, the Cyber Warfare Directorate of HNDGS participates in the protection of the operation of critical national infrastructures and other state agencies and services, with particularly satisfactory results.

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