During full-day exercises, interdisciplinary teams comprising staff from IT, medicine and administration train together to recognise a cyberattack, communicate internally and manage the incident in a coordinated manner. Depending on the size of the hospital, between 10 and 20 people take part; realistic scenarios are simulated, such as the encryption of patient data by ransomware, the failure of the telephone system or dealing with media representatives on site.

A particular challenge lies in communication between IT staff and the crisis management team: as the latter consists mainly of people without specialist IT knowledge, the exercise requires a considerable amount of translation between technical processes and operational decisions. The results of each simulation are incorporated into a scientific report which documents the state of crisis preparedness before and after the exercise, thereby also benefiting other institutions.

Further information can be found in the Fraunhofer SIT press release. (in German)

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