Cyber Europe 2012 is an exercise which brings together hundreds of cyber security experts from across the EU in order to test their readiness to combat cyber-attacks in a day-long simulation across Europe. The exercise is testing how they would respond and co-operate in the event of sustained attacks against the public websites and computer systems of major European banks.

In Cyber Europe 2012, 400 experts from major financial institutions, telecoms companies, internet service providers and local and national governments across Europe are facing more than 1200 separate cyber incidents (including more than 30,000 emails) during a simulated distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaign. This exercise is developed in the framework of the European Security Month.

This table-top exercise uses a self-contained system to simulate the characteristics and performance of actual critical information infrastructures. The exercise is testing how they would respond and co-operate in the event of sustained attacks against the public websites and computer systems of major European banks. If real, such an attack would cause massive disruption for millions of citizens and businesses across Europe, and millions of euros of damage to the EU economy.

In the next decade World Economic Forum experts estimate a 10% risk of a major Critical Information Infrastructure incident causing €200 billion in economic damage. In 2011, web-based attacks increased by 36%. A four-fold increase in companies reporting security incidents with a financial impact was reported between 2007 and 2010.