Taiwan-US Joint Cyber Security Offensive and Defensive Exercise—First of Its Kind in International Collaboration on Cyber Security

Source: Department of Information Services, the Executive Yuan

The Department of Cyber Security of the Executive Yuan announced today (the 6th) that the National Information & Communication Security Taskforce of the Executive Yuan would hold a three-day Cyber Offensive and Defensive Exercise (CODE 2019) from November 6th to 8th, 2019. While past exercises were situational, this year's exercises would feature real cyber attacks and defense. Offensive experts on government cyber security, domestic and foreign alike, had been invited to a duel with our team of defensive experts from financial institutions. The two teams would challenge each other and both teams would improve their expertise in cyber security and their ability to respond to situations.

In his address to the exercise, Chen Chi-mai, vice premier and chief cyber security officer of the Executive Yuan, emphasized that we as a nation have been frequently attacked on the web. Because cyber attacks are not bounded by national boundaries, it is difficult for any nation, alone, to fend off a superbly organized and highly technical criminal organization on cyber security. Therefore it is necessary to hold exercises for international experts to attack and defend on the web. He hoped that this event would open a door for our nation to get into international collaborations. The Department of Cyber Security indicated that the US team, in advance of this exercise, had conducted a two-day training on cyber security practice for its team members, all of whom indicted that they had learned much from the training. They also indicated that this exercise was an important landmark in the cyber security collaborations between Taiwan and the United States.

The Department of Cyber Security indicated that financial institutions, wherever they might be, have been frequent targets of organized hackers. Therefore this exercise was designed around financial cyber security. The defense team of cyber security experts was led by Wellington L. Koo, chairman of the Financial Supervisory Commission at the Executive Yuan. The exercise was executed in a simulated environment established by the National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) of NARLabs. The exercise would be something exciting to look forward to.

The National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) of NARLabs built a simulated environment to take on the challenges of the offensive and defensive maneuvers from around the world.

The Department of Cyber Security indicated that after the exercise concluded on November 8, it would arrange a workshop for participants of the event to review the exercise and the result. The feedback from the workshop would be used to help plan the next exercise.