Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) announced on April 16 that it participated in the International Cyber Attack Defense Training "Locked Shields" organized by the NATO Cyber Defense Center for four days from April 13 to 16, as a member of the Korean joint training team.
The Locked Shields training is an annual exercise conducted by the NATO Cyber Defense Center to establish a cyber defense cooperation system between member countries and solve a comprehensive cyber crisis, with more than 2,000 cyber-attack and defense experts participated.
Korea participated in the training for the first time this year, and about 30 Korean national teams, including KEPCO, the National Intelligence Service and the National Security Technology Research Institute, competed with more than 20 national teams.
In this training, each participating team managed a virtual national computer network including major infrastructures such as power and aviation, while KEPCO played a role in defending the power control system in response to NATO attack team's attempts to penetrate the computer network.
The evaluation was conducted by gaining points if the defense was successful and losing points when the system crashed as a result of the failure of defense.
In addition to technical defense capabilities, the process of responding to various policy elements such as cyber response and legal strategies was comprehensively evaluated.
"We decided to participate in the training to share know-how with participating countries with excellent cyber response capabilities," a KEPCO official said. "We expect the participation of this training will further strengthen the cyber attack defense capability and power infrastructure stability of the power network."