Personnel on Ex Cyber Marvel — More than 1,000 military and cyber specialists have been training on Exercise Cyber Marvel to ensure they can defend against such threats (Picture: MOD)

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Exercise Cyber Marvel brings together 1,000 specialists to train on cyber battlefield

A cyber defence exercise involving 26 nations has taken place to allow military and cyber specialists to practise defending critical national infrastructure from realistic cyber threats.

Cyber attacks are a daily threat, and adversaries aim to target critical national infrastructure to cause disruption, weaken national security, and gain a strategic advantage.

More than 1,000 military and cyber specialists have been training on Exercise Cyber Marvel 4 to ensure they can defend against such threats.

At the end of the exercise, the UK teams reached the top three rankings, with two of the regiments taking part being part of the reserves.

Lieutenant Colonel Rob Harris said: "With the build-up of forces on the border of Ukraine, we can see that happening so we must respond or be ready for it.

"In the cyber world, you don't get that kind of build-up. You don't get that warning."

Twenty-six nations have been taking part across 20 different locations, including London, although the main exercise has been in South Korea.

During Exercise Cyber Marvel 4, two teams – red and blue – competed in live attack-and-defence scenarios, forcing them to think creatively and develop new cyber defence techniques.

One of the participants, Flight Lieutenant Luke, said: "One of the blue teams managed to reverse engineer some ransomware within an hour-and-a-half, I believe, so they've been pretty successful so far.

"They call Friday 'Cybergeddon' – it's the day it all goes off. It's all-out war."