The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) has gathered nearly 30 financial firms for a NATO live-fire cyber defense exercise.
The Locked Shields exercise will span several days, subjecting participants to a complex series of cyber attacks on a fictional nation. These attacks will impact various sectors, including military and government operations, as well as critical infrastructure such as energy, telecommunications, shipping, and financial services.
FS-ISAC, a not-for-profit member organization, has created a financial sector scenario that simulates real-life payment system outages at a central bank and their repercussions on the financial system. This scenario is reportedly inspired by similar, but less severe outages experienced in recent years at major central banks worldwide.
Participants in the exercise include Barclays, CME Group, and Mastercard.
Steven Silberstein, CEO of FS-ISAC, stated, “Our participation will allow us to crowdsource exercise responses from our global membership to assess and mitigate threats as the scenario unfolds, building the muscle memory our members and the overarching sector can rely on when faced with real-time cyber warfare.”