17 – 19 March 2015, Bushi Resort & SPA Hotel, Skopje, Macedonia
In the period 17 – 19 March 2015, ACB’s youth organization, the Bulgarian Euro-Atlantic Youth Club (BEAYC), and the Macedonian Research Centre for Security Defence and Peace, with the support of The NATO Science for Peace and Security programme, organized an international advanced research workshop on the topic “Encouraging Cyber Defence Awareness in the Balkans”.
The purpose of the workshop was to enrich the experience and competence of the participants in the field of cyber-defence and security on the Balkans, as viewed from the perspective of NATO. The program of the workshop comprised a wide variety of modules, such as “Cyber Security Awareness Among the Balkan Countries and the Rest of the World”, “Common Cyber Threats in the Western Balkans”, “Baltic Approach to the Cyber Security Awareness Programme”, “Approach of Creating and Developing a Cyber Security Strategy”, “Human Factor Challenges for Social Engineering and Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)”, “Importance of CERT/CIRT Critical Emergency Response Team”, as well as “Cyber Defence Through the Prism of modern ‘Hybrid War’”. The main task of the forum was to provoke the active participation and engagement of the audience with the subject of the event.
The lecturing staff of the workshop included representatives of the Ministry of Information Society and Administration and the Ministry of Interior of Macedonia; the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence of NATO in Estonia; the Military Academy in Skopje; the Democratic Control of Armed Forces Centre, Belgrade; the Albanian National Agency for Cyber Security; the Bulgarian Centre for Security and Defence Management; the Institute of ICT at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; the IT Company XLAB, Slovenia; the company certSIGN, Romania; the CERTs of Bulgaria, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina; as well as a number of other experts with extensive experience and expertise in the field of ICT and cyber-defence. The event took place at the Bushi Resort & SPA Hotel, Skopje, Macedonia.