Exercise program for cyber on-call duty in the context of a sensitive event

Context

In the context of the Paris Olympics in the summer of 2024, a major company in the transport sector asked Alcyconie to prepare its IT and cyber teams for cyber crisis management in order to test the exclusive and reinforced system deployed as part of the Olympic Games.

Objectifs

In this sector, where business continuity is critical, on-call teams must be able to react effectively, day and night, weekdays and weekends. The objectives of the exercises were therefore to:

• To increase the skills of all on-call teams in their cyber crisis management capacity;
• Test the whistleblowing process in the event of a degraded cyber situation;
• Test the ability of the operational crisis unit to coordinate with the group’s bodies;
• Test the appropriation of crisis procedures by on-call members and the ability to make decisions under uncertainty.

Mission Description

After a long phase of getting to know the customer, all the personnel concerned were trained through 7 half-day exercises carried out in two weeks before the Olympic Games.

Each exercise was carried out on the basis of the same compromise scenario in order to identify, for a similar crisis, the discrepancies and/or commonalities concerning the reactions of each player.

Each half-day ended with a hot debriefing session. The entire service ended with the development of a global report allowing a clear and contextualized analysis of the overall level of maturity of the on-call teams and the practice gaps observed.

Challenges and specificities

The exercise scenario, identical to each iteration, illustrated an inherent characteristic of cyber crisis management: reactions and decisions differ drastically depending on the people involved.

In one case, the situation is not qualified quickly enough and the consequences of the attack are major. In the other, the proposed containment solutions are excessive, and their consequences exceed those of the attack itself. Depending on the composition of the teams, the company may be closed to the public, or it may deny the situation, or it may call on the national authorities to support it. The actions undertaken are intrinsically linked to the people who carry them out.

Alcyconie’s added value expertise

Cyber crisis management training allows you to highlight everyone’s reflexes and practices, to improve them, and to move towards rational and informed decision-making. They also make it possible to highlight shortcomings in procedures, which can lead to increased dependence on people.

Thanks to its concrete scenarios and its realistic platform, Alcyconie offers exercises as close as possible to real conditions, facilitating the total immersion of players. It is in this context that the behaviors of crisis cells can be observed, analyzed and improved, allowing organizations to progress towards more resilience.