The 169th Cyber Protection Team and 175th Operation Support Squadron teamed with members of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina for a joint cybersecurity seminar June 29 in Laurel, Maryland.

Brig. Gen. Adam Flasch, the director of the Maryland National Guard’s Joint Staff, observed the exercise and spoke with attendees on the importance of military cybersecurity.

“Everyone is a near-peer competitor in cyber,” Flasch said. “Our job is to make sure that not only are our networks protected but that our partner’s networks are robust and capable of repelling attacks. And, when attacked, to remediate and return back to as much normalcy as possible as quickly as possible.”

The Maryland Guard and Bosnia and Herzegovina have been linked in the Guard’s State Partnership Program for nearly 30 years.

As part of the partnership, the Maryland Army Guard’s 169th CPT has supported military-to-military knowledge transfers and team-building events with the Bosnians for four years.

The unit is helping to assess the AFBiH network infrastructure and create a secure, defendable network.

“We’re going to be working towards getting their [standard operating procedures] together, filling their playbooks with procedures and helping them understand the strategic part of [cybersecurity],” said Warrant Officer Marcus Vendittuoli, project lead for the SPP event.

Part of the plan is to develop an incident response plan instructing network users and cyber professionals how to respond when something strange happens on their computer or network, he said.