The launching event of the information security drill support platform is an activity within the framework of the Vietnam Information Security Day 2024 workshop with the theme "Information security for data infrastructure and national digital platform" which will be hosted by the Vietnam Information Security Association - VNISA on November 21 in Hanoi.

Information security drills of agencies, organizations and enterprises in Vietnam have changed overall since the end of 2021, specifically shifting from passive drills based on available situations and scenarios to real-life drills.

With the real-life exercise model, through the exercise on the unit's operating system, the incident response team of agencies and organizations gains more experience in handling and overcoming cyber attacks in reality.

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As a non-scripted exercise model, the real-life exercise takes place over a long enough period of time for the attacking teams to develop their skills, putting the rescue team on standby and ready to handle incidents. Illustration: Van Anh

According to statistics, in 2022 and 2023, about 7,000 experts participated in national, ministerial, and local-level combat exercises, helping to detect nearly 1,500 loopholes and weaknesses in the information systems of agencies and organizations.

Through the implementation of national-scale practical exercises and guidance for ministries, branches and localities in organizing exercises, in addition to the positive results achieved, the Department of Information Security also recognized that there is still a large gap in efficiency and quality between national practical exercises and practical exercises at localities and ministries.

On the other hand, the common challenge that many agencies and units are facing is lack of personnel, lack of tools, lack of funding, lack of capacity and lack of information security experience to meet practical requirements.

To compensate for these shortcomings, maximizing the capacity of digital tools and platforms is considered a feasible and effective solution for units.

As the 5th digital platform established by the Department of Information Security and provided free of charge to agencies and organizations, the information security drill support platform will provide ministries, branches, and localities with knowledge, situations, methods for handling problems, and managing drills.

According to the Department of Information Security, with the platform supporting real-life exercises, the implementation of information security exercises at agencies and organizations will be easier and of higher quality, synchronized and gradually narrowing the gap between agencies as well as with national-scale real-life exercises.

Also to support ministries, branches and localities in managing, monitoring and measuring network information security activities, at the end of May 2024, the Department of Information Security officially put into operation the platform for managing and detecting and giving early warnings of information security risks.

Previously, last year, the Department of Information Security established and provided three free digital platforms, including a platform to support management of information system security at all levels; a platform to support coordination and incident response; and a platform to support digital investigation.

The innovation of the above digital platforms is to provide tools for specialized units at the local level to manage the state and enforce the law with departments, branches, sectors, districts and communes under their management; instead of central agencies using the platform to manage and receive reports from localities as before.

Along with continuing to provide additional supporting digital platforms, the Department of Information Security will also regularly research, improve, and update the features and performance of the platforms that have been put into operation to be able to better support ministries, branches, and localities in ensuring information security.

To promote compliance with legal regulations and enhance information system security at all levels, in Directive 09 issued in February, one of the tasks the Prime Minister requested ministries, branches and localities to focus on is to regularly and effectively use information security support platforms provided by the Ministry of Information and Communications.

The third national information security exercise in 2024, taking place in November, will for the first time involve teams of experts from other ASEAN countries, in addition to domestic agencies and organizations.