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Innovative exercise to combat cyber attacks

The Metropolitan Police Service has unveiled an innovative new exercise that teaches business leaders how to protect their companies from cyber attacks. A group of academics, currently based at the University of Bristol, have worked alongside the National Cyber Security Centre and the Met's Fraud and Linked Crime Online (Falcon) unit to help raise cyber awareness amongst businesses and organisations. Since it was first demonstrated in June 2017, 13 exercises have been run with external companies, 33 have been run internally with a further eight delivered to other police forces. The exercise, which consists of two game boards with Lego pieces that represent a company with separate premises, is designed to explore the decisions that people make in order to protect their businesses and organisations from modern day threats, such as hacking and malware attacks. Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Gallagher, head of the Organised Crime Command, said: “We've had excellent feedback from everyone who has been shown this exercise and it is an excellent tool to promote awareness of the growing range of cyber security threats. Due to the physical representation of the game board, it makes cyber security easier to understand and the scoring system introduces a competitive and fun element, which is proven to aid learning. "The scale and complexity of cybercrime and fraud online is constantly evolving and our officers are proactively targeting the criminals responsible. However, it is also an important part of our work to educate members of the public how to protect themselves online and reduce their chances of being a victim of crime."

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