Summary
- ENISA’s Cyber Europe 2026 exercise simulated major cyber crises across European rail and maritime systems.
- Scenarios covered port logistics disruption, railway interference, ransomware against ticketing, and exposed passenger and emergency information.
- The exercise tested EU crisis coordination mechanisms, including the Cybersecurity Blueprint and the Cybersecurity Reserve.
ENISA has used its latest Cyber Europe exercise to test how European authorities and transport operators would respond to simultaneous cyber disruption across rail and maritime networks.
The two-day Cyber Europe 2026 exercise, held on 10 and 11 June, brought together more than 5,000 participants and more than 100 cybersecurity experts from national cyber agencies, EU and EFTA public and private-sector bodies, and EU entities. It was the eighth edition of ENISA’s large pan-European cyber exercise series, with transport chosen as the focus because of its role in economic continuity, public safety, military mobility, and cross-border logistics.
Participants worked through scenarios involving major incidents across interconnected transportation systems. ENISA said the exercise required teams to analyse advanced technical incidents while operating under the operational and political pressure of a crisis environment shaped by real threats.
In the exercise scenario, critical maritime and railway infrastructure was targeted at the same time. Port logistics and navigation systems were compromised, cargo movements were halted, and safety risks emerged, including near-collision incidents. Railway networks also suffered direct interference, with cross-border trains stopped and commuter and supply movements delayed.
Ransomware formed another part of the scenario, affecting transport authorities and ticketing services while disrupting administrative and passenger-facing operations. ENISA said the simulated attack exposed sensitive passenger and emergency information, which then fed hacktivist disinformation activity across social media.
Rail and maritime environments combine operational technology, passenger platforms, scheduling systems, ticketing, navigation, logistics, safety procedures, suppliers, and public authorities. When disruption moves through that mix, a cyber incident can become a physical service, public confidence, and crisis management event within hours.
ENISA said transport has been among the five most targeted sectors for the past two years, while both rail and maritime face a maturity problem relative to their criticality. The agency’s NIS360 work has put both sectors in a risk zone, with cybersecurity maturity lagging behind the importance of the services they support.
Europe’s regulatory structure is also raising expectations. Transport falls inside the NIS2 framework for essential and important entities, while the Cyber Solidarity Act and the revised EU cyber crisis management Blueprint are intended to give the bloc a clearer playbook for major incidents that cross national borders.
Cyber Europe 2026 also tested the EU Cybersecurity Reserve for the first time within the exercise series. The Reserve, operated by ENISA and foreseen under Article 14 of the Cyber Solidarity Act, is intended to provide incident response services from trusted managed security service providers when large incidents exceed normal response capacity.
The exercise reflects a shift in European cyber resilience planning. Regulation is placing more responsibility on operators and national authorities, but transport incidents still depend on practical coordination between public bodies, private operators, suppliers, sector regulators, national cyber agencies, and crisis management teams.
ENISA said the exercise will now be followed by evaluation and analysis, with findings consolidated into after-action reports. Those reports will show where capability gaps sit across detection, operational handover, political escalation, supplier coordination, and response capacity. The scenarios already point to a resilience challenge that is wider than transport IT: Europe’s ability to keep people, goods, and strategic services moving when digital disruption reaches operational systems.
