The Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT) has successfully completed its annual drill to test the response capability of leading Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRT) within the Asia Pacific economies on 11th March, 2020.

        The theme of this year’s APCERT Drill is “Banker doubles down on Mining”. This exercise reflects real incidents and issues that exist on the Internet. The participants handled a case of a local business affected by malware infection which is triggered by data breach.

        This drill included the need for the teams to interact locally and internationally, with CSIRTs/CERTs and targeted organizations, for coordinated suspension of malicious infrastructure, analysis of malicious code, as well as notification and assistance to affected entities. Throughout the exercise, the participating teams activated and tested their incident handling arrangements. This incident response exercise, which was coordinated across many economies, reflects the collaboration amongst the economies in mitigating cyber threats and validates the enhanced communication protocols, technical capabilities and quality of incident responses that APCERT fosters in assuring Internet security and safety.

        26 CSIRTs from 20 economies of APCERT (Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, People's Republic of China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam) participated in the drill. From the external parties, CSIRTs from 7 economies (Benin, Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan and Tunisia) of OIC-CERT and AfricaCERT participated.