A/68/156/Add.1 2.3. National Cyber Security Exercise 2013 National Cyber Security Exercise 2013, which was co-organized by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, under the auspices of the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications, was carried out from 24 December 2012 to 11 January 2013, with the participation of 61 public, private and non-governmental organizations. Notwithstanding that most of the participants were public organizations, private and non-governmental organizations also participated in the exercise. In addition, the Chairman of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)-International Multilateral Partnership against Cyber Threats (IMPACT) and one of the board members of Forum for Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), which are international cooperation platforms on cyber security, attended the closing event of the exercise as speakers. 3. Project on the prevention of cyber threats The project on the prevention of cyber threats (Siber Tehditleri Önleme Projesi-STOP) involves the development of necessary mechanisms for the establishment of a honey pot system to detect cyber threats, the instalment and improvement of a cyber attack report system and the production of metadata regarding cyber threats. The activities required by the project are being fulfilled according to the deadlines anticipated by the short-term national cyber security action plan. Within the context of the international cooperation dimension of the project, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority became a member of ITU-IMPACT, which works under ITU. 4. Project on the prevention of spam e-mails This project was conducted in 2009, under the coordination of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority and with the efforts of Internet service providers and hosting service providers. The purpose of the project was to prevent spam e-mails that pose a threat against network security and keep the network resources busy. At the end of the project, the number of Internet providers propagating spam was reduced by 99 per cent; this improvement was reflected in the reports prepared by global cyber security firms. 5. Establishment of a domestic Internet Exchange Point The Internet service providers’ routing practice of unnecessarily circulating the Internet traffic between two end points from a remote point causes a decrease in service quality owing to unnecessary transmission delays and an increase in the security concerns. Within this context, by the establishment of an effective Internet Exchange Point and the operators’ ability to exchange their traffic under more attractive circumstances, those undesired routing practices and the security concerns caused by them can be highly reduced. Therefore, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority conducts various activities together with the related parties (domestic Internet service providers and international content providers) focused on the formation of an effective domestic Internet Exchange Point. 13-47545 23/24