EU holds largest-ever cyber security exercise

ATHENS, Greece — A European Union cyber-security agency was in Athens to conduct the largest exercise ever held on the continent to prevent attacks on Europe's public utilities and communications networks.

The director of the European Network and Information Security Agency, Udo Helmbrecht, told The Associated Press that Thursday's one-day exercise involving 29 countries and 200 agencies dealt with attack scenarios against "critical infrastructure."

Helmbrecht said European countries were working to improve their coordination between national security agencies and to further standardize protective software and methods.

Examples of serious past incidents, he said, include a wave of cyber attacks against Estonia in 2007 that severely affected the country's banks and government agencies, and the Stuxnet computer virus that was used to target energy and industrial sites in Iran.