Experts from the US Government joined counterparts from EU Member States to simulate how cyber security authorities on both sides of the Atlantic would cooperate in response to attacks. The test were made in Brussels on 3 November.

The first test of trans-Atlantic responses to cyber incidents, including cyber attacks, took place in Brussels on 3 November. The day-long table-top exercise, Cyber Atlantic 2011, has been use to simulate cyber-crisis scenarios to explore how the EU and US would engage each other and cooperate in the event of cyber-attacks on their critical information infrastructures. It was based on two hypothetical scenarios: a cyber-attack which attempts to extract and publish online sensitive information from the EU's national cyber security agencies, and an attack on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems in EU power generation equipment.

The EU contribution to Cyber Atlantic 2011 has been enabled by the European Commission, with key support from ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, which has facilitated the exercise with the vital technical contributions provided by EU member states. The Department of Homeland Security has been in the lead for the US. The EU CERT also participated as an observer.

Cyber Atlantic 2011 itself results from a commitment in April 2011 from Vice-President Kroes, Commissioner Malmström and the Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to deepen trans-Atlantic cooperation in the face of increasing threats to global internet and digital networks via the EU-US Working Group on Cyber-Security and Cyber-Crime. It grew out of the EU-US Working Group on Cyber-security and Cyber-crime, which was established in November 2010 to tackle new threats to the global networks upon which the security and prosperity of our free societies depend. Initial findings of the exercise will be taken into account in the Working Group's report which will be presented to the EU-US Summit later this year.