This interactive workshop examined a critical but often underdeveloped layer of cyber defense: municipal resilience. Speakers and participants discussed the impact of disruptions of critical municipal services like energy distribution, telecommunications and other interconnected essential services. As modern conflicts increasingly target civilian infrastructure, urban digital ecosystems have become operational theatres and their disruption has immediate strategic, societal and military implications. The discussions also highlighted the importance of multi-layer crisis preparedness, close public-private collaboration and the role of voluntary reserve networks in strengthening resilience and readiness for cyber emergencies. Participants further examined the challenges of establishing and operating a Security Operations Centre (SOC) under wartime conditions. Participants explored how strengthening municipal-level cyber capabilities contribute directly to national resilience baseline requirements, civil preparedness objectives and whole-of-society defence concepts. 

Additionally, the workshop drew lessons from Kyiv region. Particularly, how faced with kinetic attacks, cyber operations and prolonged power outages, municipal authorities, together with private sector partners, implemented rapid measures to maintain resilient connectivity for millions of citizens. Experts shared their experience in building added cyber resilience: maintaining mobile network stability, backup power and decentralised energy solutions, public-private cooperation and crisis communication and civil preparedness. 

For comparative perspective, the experts from Taiwan and Estonia shared their strategic outlook to urban preparedness in high-threat geopolitical environment, redundancy planning and interaction of civil defence and response during cyber emergencies.  

Workshop was led by EU CyberNet Experts Lead Cecilia Popa and experts included CEO and Founder of Sec-TA Viktor Yakymovych, Deputy Director for Cybersecurity, Specialised Municipal Enterprise “Kyivteleservice” Oleksandr Voloshchuk, Senior Advisor to Taiwan’s National Security Council Dr. Yuh-Jye Lee and Director of Critical Information Infrastructure Department of Estonian Information System Authority Raimo Peterson. 

• Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eucybernet/albums/72177720333877169