Regarding nowadays challenges and capacity building on cybersecurity, KEDS participated in the Tabletop Exercise (TTX) for cybersecurity professionals across the western Balkans. The exercise was organized by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), together with U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF GLOBAL) was held in Skopje on July 3-4, 2023.

This capacity-building TTX workshop aimed to enhance selected participants' skills in testing and evaluating government coordinating structures, processes, and capabilities regarding cyber event response and recovery, and provided a basis for government stakeholders to self-identify and address issues related to cybersecurity incident response capabilities and process gaps.

The TTX culminated with an after-action report that provided an analytical review of the performance and results from the TTX and identified both successes and gaps in response capabilities. A synopsis of the report is sent to all attending delegates together with their certificate of participation and shared with the U.S. Embassies in each of the home countries, providing insights to plan future cyber capacity building and collaboration in the region.

In this line, our representative Mr. Luan Gashi, who is our Cybersecurity Department Manager said that “CISA (website with all its content) has always been my primary source where I get my information and knowledge about Critical Infrastructures, especially the energy sector where our company belongs. Excited and honored to meet senior experts of this agency conducting a Cyber Incident Response TTX, sharing information and best practices among all, many of which are being implemented and improved in our company as well”.