During June 2023, the Restena Foundation team was made aware of cybersecurity through online training offered by the Directorate of Defence of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MFEA) on its virtual training environment Luxembourg Cyber Range.

Personalised advice to correct bad habits

The e-learning course offered to Restena employees focused on the risks and threats that everyone can face in their everyday lives, including:

1. Cyber Hygiene or how to recognize the risks in the digital world posed by hackers, data leaks or other incidents.
2. Back to the office or how to recognize cyber threats in both the office and home office.

All Restena employees analysed their habits and usual behaviour thanks to this course aimed at passing on good practices and correcting potential bad reflexes. Throughout their training, they received immediate feedback on their cybersecurity risks and personalised advice on how to reduce them.

Awareness, the key for mindful employees

The virtual training environment used for the training is hosted by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, more specifically, the Directorate of Defence, as part of its Cyber Defence Strategy of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It aims to enhance technical skills as well as crisis management capabilities for cybersecurity professionals. As the National Research and Education Network (NREN) for Luxembourg, Restena benefits directly from this platform.

The proposed training completes the range of awareness-raising and best-practice promotion services developed by Restena's Security team, this time for Restena employees. Restena's Security team indeed offers all staff and students of research and education (R&E) institutions in Luxembourg a range of activities to help them learn about and protect themselves against cyber security risks. It includes:

• free of charge events open to every member of the Luxembourg research and education community (CyberDay.lu and Data Privacy Day) ;
• on-demand training for research and education institutions responding to their needs for employees' awareness-raising ;
• specific training within the Digital Learning Hub Luxembourg catalogue.

➔  CyberDay.lu 2023, designed to provides useful information on existing actual threats in the world of cybersecurity, will take place on Thursday 12 October 2023 at the SKIP Pavilion in Esch-Belval.

➔ The Digital Learning Hub Luxembourg training catalogue - in which Restena offers training - can be read on dlh.lu website.

Beyond the Luxembourg Cyber Range, Restena is a regular partner to the Directorate of Defence to maintain its employee's skills at a high level. Every year since 2020, some Restena team employees have participated with the Directorate of Defence and other Luxembourg representatives in Locked Shields, an annual cyber defence exercise organized by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence - CCDCOE. In 2023, the ‘BlueTeam’ Luxembourg/Latvia reached fourth place.