NATO Defence Ministers are meeting in Brussels this week to hold the first-ever dedicated
review of the Alliance's cyber defence efforts.
It's a sign that the issue of cyber defence has reached the very top of NATO's agenda.
Given the evolving nature of the challenge, the Alliance needs to continuously develop
its capabilities to improve threat detection, reduce vulnerabilities and respond faster
to attacks.
These same issues were also the subjects of a very different gathering in Amsterdam recently.
At the IT security conference 'Hack in the Box' many of the world's leading hackers and
IT security professionals learnt about the latest trends and threats in cyber space.
Edward Schwartz works for RSA, an IT security company that counts NATO among its customers.
"Many of the people here work in some aspect of computer network defence, whether it's
working for a government agency, a bank or a security company.
They're gonna try to figure out how can we get better at what we're doing.
And that's really what this is about is getting better techniques, becoming faster, becoming
smarter.
And these conferences that are technical in nature really help provide those capabilities
and skills to these very elite technicians and engineers."
Dhillon Kannabhiran is a hacker turned IT security professional who founded the conference.
His motto is 'keep knowledge free'.
The best way to make cyber space more secure he says is by sharing information with everyone:
the public, industry, governments and the military.
"The fact that military as well as law enforcement people actually come to conferences like 'Hack
in the Box' to learn, but to also have discussions and I think that's the main thing to realise
that you don't know everything and that there might be somebody out there who knows something
that you don't and that it's worth having a conversation."
Those conversations do take place informally at events like this, Schwartz confirms.
He says collaboration against cyber threats is essential, as attacks are increasingly
becoming too sophisticated for any one organisation or country to deal with alone.
"If one country or one organisation is trying to just defend themselves without collaborating
with others it's like living on an island.
So organisations like NATO, Europol, Interpol, other organisations in the US that perform
collaboration, it's the power of many collaborating that really gives the power of intelligence.
You can find out about these attacks, share that information and have a lot more leg up
on the adversary, a lot more success in terms of detecting and stopping what they're doing."
Last year alone, NATO dealt with over 2 500 cases of abnormal cyber activity and intrusion
attempts.
The Alliance is therefore considering the scope for increasing its collaboration.
Sharing more information, more common training and establishing best practices are just some
of the issues on the agenda.
Schwartz says the military has been taking the threat seriously, but it's a fast-moving
target.
"I think that the military and, typically, certain aspects of the government sector have
certainly been on the leading edge of a lot of this.
That's true in the US, it's true in a lot of Europe, it's definitely true in the UK
and in other parts of the world.
I visit a lot of the world and I believe that to be true.
// So while some people may see the government as slow to respond in some categories of what
they do, in cyber security the military has recognised for a while that this is a very
important area and that they need to invest in it."
Jim Manico teaches webmasters to create more secure websites, both professionally and for
a charity called OWASP.
For him sharing knowledge freely is all about levelling the playing field, so that no one
group, organisation or nation can get too far ahead of the rest and dominate cyber space.
"Think of this as another new era.
It's another form of weapon, the world of cyber.
I see the military migrating into Army, Navy, Air Force and Cyber Force, Marines, it's another
branch of the military that I feel is needed.
So I think it's critical for NATO to mature those capabilities, just like you had to once
build new aircraft and hire the first generation of pilots and train them.
That's just a fact of life."
Whether Cyber Forces will ever be a fact of life, remains to be seen.
While the Alliance is intent on developing its cyber defence, the debate on how best
to do so has only just begun.