NATO Announces Virtual Rapid Response Cybersecurity Capability
In the months since Russia invaded Ukraine, NATO has flexed its muscles and responded swiftly and with solidarity against the country’s show of military aggression. So, it seemed logical that the expanding alliance would aim to meet cyberattacks with a virtual rapid response cybersecurity capability, announced during its recent summit in Madrid.
Underscoring its promise to build on a newly enhanced defense posture by taking a “360-degree approach, across the land, air, maritime, cyber, and space domains, and against all threats and challenges,” the group of world leaders also noted in a declaration that “Cyberspace is contested at all times. Malign actors seek to degrade our critical infrastructure, interfere with our government services, extract intelligence, steal intellectual property and impede our military activities.”
To strengthen cybersecurity resilience and defense, the allied leaders said NATO would build “on last year’s adoption of a new Cyber Defense Policy for NATO” by endorsing the “new action plan to strengthen cyber cooperation across the political, military, and technical levels.” That policy stated that a cyberattack could trigger Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
“The NATO rapid cybersecurity response initiative will have at least one notable impact—increased military collaboration with industry (via a public and private partnership) and across member nations, improving threat detection and response capabilities,” said Benny Czarny, founder and CEO of OPSWAT.
“The increasing reliance on technology and expanded adoption of cyber in military strategies to disrupt, damage, or destroy critical infrastructure directly impacts a nation’s ability to defend itself,” he said. “NATO’s extension from just threat detection to a rapid cyber response clears the path for offensive cyber strategies if necessary and offers a 360-degree approach to defense.”
He called the NATO initiative “significant because it simply codifies member nations’ commitment to cyber responses, and offers broader collaboration across alliance nations to minimize damage, proactively ‘hunt’ threats and potentially take offensive measures to minimize the impact of attacks.” And the alliance is also presenting an expanded and unified front as a deterrent to attacks against member nations’ governments, businesses and citizens.”
At this year’s summit, NATO vowed to make cybersecurity, which is an operational domain for the alliance, “a key component of NATO’s strengthened deterrence and defense posture” and will build “on lessons learned from the conflict in Ukraine … to use NATO as a coordination platform for offering national assets to build and exercise a virtual rapid response cyber capability to respond to a serious cyberattack.”
Russia has ramped up cyberattacks against Ukraine in the months after the war began, prompting NATO’s action, but the alliance is also concerned about staunching China’s malign activities and any joint efforts the two countries might conjure up.
“Globally, we have seen the increasing use of cyberwarfare and nation-state attacks as a military strategy. Additionally, there have been increased geopolitical pressures from Russia on North Atlantic regions in response to its attacks on Ukraine, including cyberattacks,” said Czarny. “Earlier this spring, China and Russia ‘announced’ their alliance and conveyed the partnership has ‘no limits,’ hence why the west has been defining its response to the growing China-Russia threat.”
As part of the NATO effort, the U.S. will “offer robust national capabilities as part of this support network.”
The virtual rapid response capability is completely voluntary.
