cyber threats is usually among the elements of the exercise. Participants in the exercises, besides the NATO institutions and the member states, may be NATO partner countries and observers from humanitarian organisations and the EU. The exercise has been conducted annually since 1992 The target group of NATO’s annual Cyber Coalition is the environments in NATO and the member states who will manage cyber incidents at operational and partly technical level. Cyber Coalition 2016 was the Alliance’s largest exercise so far in this field, with participation from 27 NATO countries and partner countries besides participation from the EU, industrial players and academia. This exercise has been conducted since 2008. 9 Critical ICT infrastructure Our society consists of a number of functions critical to society, such as energy supply, financial and satellite-based services. These are functions that must be maintained at all times in the interest of society and the population's fundamental needs. A number of these societal functions require that there is an ICT infrastructure that works almost everywhere and all the time. ICT infrastructures consist of information and communication infrastructures (internet services, electronic communication networks, etc.) and information and communication systems that are part of the essential function.13 These may include central management and control systems, as well as administrative and logistic systems. Protection of critical ICT infrastructure is one of the main areas of the EU’s ENISA agency. All EU member states are encouraged to prioritise this in their national cyber security strategies. NATO has civil preparedness and civil-military cooperation on the agenda to a greater extent than before. Civil preparedness, crisis management and robust essential functions are a prerequisite for each country’s and thus the Alliance’s, overall preparedness and defence. The Government wants critical ICT infrastructure to be robust and reliable, so that undesired incidents are avoided as much as possible, while being able to quickly restore a normal situation following an undesired incident. We must also be able to ensure that no unauthorised person have access to the information communicated through such infrastructure. Protection of critical ICT infrastructure is vital in the work the Government is doing within cyber security. Part of this work is to participate in international arenas (see box 9.1 about Meridian). Box 9.1 Meridian Meridian is an annual international meeting place for government representatives who work on national policy-making related to protection of critical ICT infrastructure. The object of the conference is to exchange experiences from how to deal with national and global challenges. Meridian has contributed to the preparation of the “Good Practice Guide on CIIP for governmental policy-makers”. The guide provides a good overview of the steps to protect critical ICT infrastructure. It is intended to be particularly useful for countries initiating a process to identify and protect critical ICT infrastructure, but is also useful for countries that have advanced further in the field. 13 The GFCE-MERIDIAN Good Practice Guide on Critical Information Infrastructure Protection for governmental policy -makers.