Tanja Maier reports.
Fight. Flight. Freeze. Face.
There are many possible reactions when you must handle a crisis, but ideally you would choose option four: face the crisis head-on. For years, an annual crisis management workshop has been organised in the context of the GÉANT project for and by NRENs interested in improving crisis management preparedness and planning. Today, CLAW is a household name in the community. CLAW online was launched in 2023 and combined with the objective of making CLAW materials more easily reusable, PAW was born.
I participated in the first PAW on 24 April 2025, and this is my experience.
The crisis simulation – where are you?
When you participate in PAW, you are a citizen of Guilder, and you work closely with the NREN from Guilder – GuilREN. The country is ruled by the House of Iris, with Queen Anne of Dyson as the Head of State. Never mind if you’re not fluent in the language of Guilder yet – there is a crisis at hand, and you need to communicate (luckily the people of Guilder have no issue communicating in English whatsoever).
Even though you are now a citizen of Guilder, which has been having issues with an extremist hacking group (watch out for them!), the golden rule of worldbuilding applies: unless specified otherwise, everything in your world is assumed to behave exactly as it would in the real world.
There’s been an attack – what now?
Before you enter the imaginary setting of Guilder, you receive some training on the basics of crisis management. The training covers the elements of a crisis, the main challenges, and what you need in your crisis management plan vs your crisis response plan. The training presentations offer a great overview of what you’ll need later and give you context on what you are expected to do in your role as part of the Crisis Management Team.
After the training, there was a short interval before we entered our break-out rooms and met our teams. Each crisis management team had representatives from different backgrounds – in mine I covered the communications perspective while my teammates worked in NOCs, CSIRTs, or Information Security Management. Once in our break-out rooms, the crisis simulation began. Without wanting to give anything away, I can say this much: there was confusion, continuous developments, and the need to act as quickly as possible became soon very clear – lives could depend on it. In our response to the crisis, my team managed to have a good overview of all the ongoing issues and handled them accordingly.
At the end of PAW – covering around 50 minutes of training, 10 minutes of worldbuilding, and a full hour for the crisis simulation – I felt considerably more prepared to face a real crisis. The cherry on top was my team’s success in handling the situation, when we managed to fulfil all the requirements for a “happy ending” until the House of Rousing Fire strikes (the extremist hacking group that is) again!
Advancing security awareness
Security is increasingly important in GÉANT’s efforts to connect and transform R&E in Europe. From having a dedicated Security Operations Team (SOC to rehauling the network in GN4-3N to become more resilient; from the internationally delivered Security Bootcamps to Work Package 8 in the GÉANT project becoming one of the largest cross NREN teams, security is crosscutting throughout the organisation and the project. GÉANT’s work in areas such as cybersecurity supports the EU efforts to enhance digital resilience, and PAW represents an additional offer for organisations to run tailor-made internal cybersecurity simulations.
PAW exercise materials
One of the main goals behind creating PAW was to develop material that could be easily reused and adapted by others. The resources from the PAW 2025 exercise are now available for any organisation looking to strengthen its crisis preparedness or deliver this training to others. The exercise is easy to customise, whether replicating the full PAW exercise or adapting it to specific organisational needs, contexts, or national languages. If you decide to reuse the materials in any form, team PAW would love to hear from you! Your feedback or experiences help understand how the materials are being used and inform future improvements. Download the materials: PAW 2025 Materials
CLAW2025. Save the date!
And drum roll… CLAW 2025 will return as an in-person event. Wondering where and when? Read on to find out!Organised in collaboration with CSUC, CLAW 2025 will bring together experts, practitioners, and professionals from the international NREN community to explore the challenges of crisis management.
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Dates: 2–3 December 2025
Register today
Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks. We look forward to welcoming you in Barcelona!
For any further information about GÉANT crisis management workshops, please contact Zoe Fischer zoe.fischer @ geant.org
