The Alliance’s relevant military and technical committees and bodies, as well as the Allies individually, are now engaged in implementing the policy. In line with this, a cyber defence Centre of Excellence has been set up in Estonia and NATO's Military Committee recently agreed on a Cyber Defence Concept which adds practical action programmes to fit within the overarching policy.
These actions include the creation of a Cyber Defence Management Authority, which brings together the key actors in NATO’s cyber defence activities. The Authority will manage cyber defence across all NATO’s communication and information systems and could support individual Allies in defending against cyber attacks upon request.
NATO is encouraging the use of government and industry best practices to avoid the duplication of efforts. The Allies are working in close coordination with an industrial consortium to achieve it.
At the 2002 Prague Summit, NATO leaders directed that a technical NATO Cyber Defence Programme be implemented. This consisted of a three-phased programme of practical activities.
- The first phase covered the creation of the currently functioning NATO Computer Incident Response Capability (NCIRC) and establishing its interim operating capability;
- The second phase involved bringing the NCIRC up to full operational capability;
- The third phase consists of incorporating lessons learned from phase one and two, as well as using the latest cyber defence measures to enhance NATO’s cyber defence posture.
Up until the cyber attacks on Estonia in the spring of 2007, NATO primarily addressed the protection of its own systems rather than efforts to assist Allies to protect theirs. These efforts, to a large extent, consisted of protecting NATO's encrypted communication and information system that handles the traffic of classified information throughout the Alliance.
The attacks on Estonia, which were conducted through the Internet against open, public websites, did not imply any new threat to this system but did in no way obviate the need to protect it. They served as a reminder of the vulnerabilities of key systems in open, modern societies to acts of hostility. In this way, the attacks also demonstrated the need for an Alliance cyber defence policy that would also address cooperation to protect critical communication systems beyond the encrypted networks.
NATO is exploring the potential for practical cooperation on cyber defence. This cooperation will be developed incrementally, beginning with exchanges of information on basic political principles.
