site.btaE-Governance Ministry Participates in NATO's Largest Cyber Defence Exercise

The Ministry of Electronic Governance participated in the fifteenth edition of NATO's cyber defence exercise, Cyber Coalition 2023, which is among the largest cyber exercises in the world, the Ministry said in a press release on Wednesday. This year, more than 1,000 participants from over 30 NATO structures, Alliance member countries, partner nations and European Union structures took part in the exercise.

The Ministry was represented by Deputy Minister Mihail Stoinov, joined by Bozhidar Gruncharov from the e-Government Executive Agency's National Computer Security Incident Response Team.

The Estonia-based NATO Centre of Excellence constructed a cyber polygon in a VPN network for the several-day-long exercise at the Prof. Tsvetan Lazarov Defense Institute in Sofia. Among the Bulgarian participants were representatives of the Ministry of Defence, the State Agency for National Security, the National Service for Protection, as well as representatives of the private sector.

During the Cyber Coalition exercise, which has been held since 2008, realistic scenarios involving the use of modern cyber threats and effects were practiced. The main objective is to build a cyber coalition of NATO, member and partner entities to strengthen the Alliance's capabilities to deter, defend and counter threats in cyberspace. Among the other goals is the cooperation of the individual state administrations and the verification of their capacity in the field.