A group of professionals working in cybersecurity are participating in the second edition of the National Cyber Drill 2024, an exercise to test and assess the capabilities of these professionals in Seychelles to ensure the country's readiness against cyberattacks.

During his opening speech, the principal secretary for the Department of Information, Communication and Technology (DICT), Benjamin Choppy, emphasised the importance of maintaining vigilance and readiness in the face of evolving cybersecurity threats.

"It is crucial for us to test and refine our incident response plans and procedures at a national level in a controlled environment. Exercises like this simulate real-world cyber threats, helping us to identify weaknesses in our defences, improve coordination among different response teams, and enhance our overall preparedness against increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks," he said.

The first edition of the National Cyber Drill was held in June last year, and Choppy added that based on feedback they received, this year they improved several aspects of the exercise.

"Reflecting on the success of the first National Cyber drill in 2023, DICT has carefully considered the feedback from participants. As such, this year's cyber drill will be a more technical one. We have incorporated more technical exercises to provide you with enhanced hands-on experience," said the principal secretary.

"A successful cyber attack can severely impact our country, which is why safeguarding our critical information infrastructures is paramount. This year, we have ensured that participants come from both the public and private sectors, covering the different critical information infrastructure institutions or providers," he stressed.

The director for policy strategy and research at the DICT, Beryl Payet, told reporters that it was especially important to have professionals who form part of Seychelles' critical information infrastructures, such as banks, telecommunication as well as law enforcement, participate in this exercise.

"This exercise will be done in a virtual environment; the participants will be separated into different teams. Then there will be simulations of different types of attacks against them that they will have to defend against," she said.

The cyber drill exercise is being done in collaboration with the Computer Emergency Response Team of Mauritius (CERT-MU), a team led by the head of CERT-MU, Dr Kaleem Usmani.

Speaking to reporters, Usmani used the example of ransomware to explain the importance of such exercises.

"These scenarios like ransomware, ransomware is very rampant, is very sophisticated. It is very complex. And since we are talking about the critical infrastructures, they are running the essential services in the country. Then in that case, it is best that these kinds of threats should be, in a way, discussed and their solutions and counter majors need to be understood by these critical sectors. So, this is a prominent threat, and that's why it is on board, and not only here around the world, all the different countries, they are building resilience around how to handle ransomware," Usmani added.

Usmani clarified that apart from ransomware, they will also be covering a variety of other kinds of virtual attacks such as malware and phishing, which is a scam through email to trick the recipient into sharing sensitive information, usually by impersonating a company or trusted individual.