APCERT's Annual Cybersecurity Drill Refines Members Tactics
28 JAN 2010 (Bernama)

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 28 (Bernama)-Members of the Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT) Thursday completed their annual cybercrime fighting drill, further refining their anti-cybercrime tactics.

The drill, aimed at testing the response capabilities of leading Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRT) from the Asia Pacific economies, had Cybersecurity Malaysia playing the role of exercise coordinator for the third year.

Cybersecurity Malaysia is a member of the APCERT, a body set up by leading and national CSIRTS from the Asia Pacific region.

The chairman of APCERT, Roy Ko, said the drill was important because cyber attacks were borderless.

"It is vital for every CSIRT to share the information and experience on cross-border incident handling, to refine and test the points of contacts and procedure and to respond to active Internet attacks in progress," Ko said in a statement here Thursday.

The theme for this year's drill was "Fighting Cyber Crimes with Financial Incentives".

It was attended by 16 teams from 14 economies who responded to the simulated incidents and shared information to detect, analyze the malware and take actions to shut down or block systems hosting phishing sites or involved in distributed denial of service attacks across the region.

In 2009, Malaysia CERT, which is part of Cybersecurity Malaysia, handled more than 3,500 security incidents involving phishing, online fraud, malware infection and system intrusions.