At the beginning of May almost 70 NREN representatives from Europe and Canada gathered remotely to attend the online version of CLAW – a simulation exercise of a crisis situation. Although it was not the first time that CLAW took place online, it was the first time that we decided to deliver a shorter version of the latest physical CLAW 2022 event. Who attended CLAW? Representatives from Communications, NOC, CSIRT and Information Security Management met for an afternoon and took active part in the 2 hour crisis exercise.
Maria Edblom Tauson, Senior Security Officer from SUNET commented:
“We had hoped to attract individuals who are new to CLAW and indeed we were able to introduce so many new people to the fictional world of the Kingdom of Guilder.”
CLAW 2023 online was a shorter repeat edition of CLAW 2022 exercise included. The event started with a basic introductive training. What is a crisis? How do we prepare for a crisis? What is a crisis management plan? Why do we need crisis exercises?
The training was followed by a brief outline of the online hands-on crisis exercise. Participants were split into different virtual break-out rooms and were presented with a line of events that soon escalated into a large crisis. In the final part of the exercise participants in the communication role were invited to give either a short summary of the crisis or to read a press statement. Subsequently participants were offered the opportunity to remain for an extra hour for a spontaneous feed-back session.
Maria continued:
“One of our goals was to open the crisis exercise training to new people, thankfully, due to the online nature of the event, we were able to welcome community members who had never attended any CLAW event before. We wanted participants to get a real taste of the CLAW event and hopefully to feel inspired to take part in a physical CLAW which will include more in-depth training and deeper experience sharing. We hope that even a shorter version of the original event contributed to increasing management awareness and enhancing crisis management skills.”
In the coming weeks we will be posting updates and programme details of the next physical CLAW that will take place in Poznan, hosted by PSNC, on 5-6 December 2023, so please watch this space, or just get in touch with Charlie van Genuchten to find out more. Registration is already open: https://events.geant.org/event/1412/
