New exercise unveiled to help businesses in the fight against cyber attacks

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has unveiled an innovative new exercise that teaches business leaders how to protect their companies from cyber attacks. The resource, entitled 'Decisions and Disruptions', funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), was first developed by a group of academics, currently based at the University of Bristol, in partnership with the National Cyber Security Centre. Officers in the Met's Fraud and Linked Crime Online (Falcon) unit have adapted it to be included in their regular cyber awareness presentations given to businesses and organisations. Since it was first demonstrated in June 2017, 13 exercises have been run with external companies, 33 have been run internally with a further eight delivered to other police forces. The cyber prevent team are booked to carry out another 18 events to more than 100 people during the next two months, which include a bank, and a multiple business event where ten exercises will be running simultaneously. A number of the events are being ran in partnership with the City of London Police's Cyber Crime Unit who have adopted the initiative and are also delivering it as part of their cyber-crime awareness offering, ensuring businesses across the capital are protected. The exercise, which consists of two game boards with Lego pieces that represent a company with separate premises, is designed to explore the decisions that people make, in order to protect their businesses and organisations from modern day threats, such as hacking and malware attacks.