An online table-top exercise was organised for the Georgian authorities by the EU-funded CyberEast project on 15 September, aiming to bring together all relevant national stakeholders and focus on the specific scenario of attack on election security, developing the skills of coordination and response in real-time environment.

The exercise was intended to focus on the following aspects of elections security: 

• tackling social engineering, fake news and online disinformation campaigns, especially from foreign actors; 
• open source intelligence (OSINT) for purposes of attribution and planning response; 
• coordination and joint response needs and responsibilities.

The project pointed to the history of large-scale cyber-attacks against Georgia in 2008, stressing the importance of cooperation between policy makers, the cybersecurity community, criminal justice authorities and private sector. Information systems supporting the electoral process are a classic example of critical information infrastructure that needs proper protection against cyber threats, the project added.

The CyberEast project, which falls under the EU4Digital initiative, aims at adopting legislative and policy frameworks compliant to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime and related instruments, reinforcing the capacities of judicial and law enforcement authorities and interagency cooperation, and increasing efficient international cooperation and trust on criminal justice, cybercrime and electronic evidence, including between service providers and law enforcement.

Press release