The JRC, together with the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (ICI Bucharest) and the Digital Security Authority of Cyprus (DSA), was responsible for a Course on Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) from Risk Assessment to Resilience, which took place in two Modules, on 8-10 December 2020 and 23-25 February 2021 respectively. It addressed EU Institutions and Member States as well as representatives of the EU private sector and academia.

The 2^nd Module was prepared and conducted by JRC (E.2 Unit) through a Table-Top Exercise, aiming at demonstrating the key objectives, challenges and concerns for the practical implementation of CIP at operational level, within the collaborative EU/international environment and the multi-dimensional threat and technological landscape of the modern era. To this end, the exercise scenario considered an attack with Hybrid Threat characteristics, which was carried out by a terrorist organisation against Critical Infrastructures in the EU territory.

The exercise was carried out by means of POSEIDON (Platform-based Operational System Events and Injects Distribution Online), a web-based IT system that supports the online organisation, execution, monitoring and assessment of both table-top and field exercises. Furthermore, this tool can accommodate both real-time and non-real-time exercises.

"POSEIDON supports the execution of complex exercises with the participation of multiple stakeholders covering multiple areas of responsibility and fields of interest/expertise (i.e. cross-sectoral exercises)."

POSEIDON has been designed and developed by JRC (E.2 Unit) and it is freely offered to the EU Institutions and the Member States competent authorities, either as a software package for their on-premises installation or as a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution.

The exercise confirmed the added value introduced by POSEIDON which allowed the smooth and efficient interaction among all participants (i.e. both the exercise organisers and the training audience), facilitating all the information exchanges in a structured and traceable manner.