The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) announced on Wednesday that four countries have joined as members: Ukraine, Ireland, Japan and Iceland.
The announcement was made on the cybersecurity center’s 15th anniversary. The organization, based in Tallinn, Estonia, now has 39 members, including non-NATO countries — Ukraine, Ireland and Japan are not in NATO.
“I am truly grateful that Iceland, Ireland, Japan, and Ukraine have decided to join us,” said Mart Noorma, director of the CCDCOE. “We are delighted to have like-minded nations sharing cyber knowledge and exchanging methods to systematically address cyber attacks. Our goal is to foster increased cooperation and reap the benefits of this large-scale coalition through research, training, and exercises.”
The NATO cyber defense hub conducts cyber defense research, training, and exercises, focusing on areas such as technology, strategy, operations and law.
The CCDCOE recently conducted the annual Locked Shields cyber defense exercise, in which the representatives of 38 countries took part.
In the exercise, Red Teams compete against Blue Teams, which are tasked with defending a country’s information systems and critical infrastructure from large-scale attacks.
NATO members have been targeted by state-sponsored threat groups and governments are aware that there is always the risk that hackers could launch disruptive or destructive attacks on critical infrastructure.
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Related: China Not Happy With South Korea Joining NATO Cyber Defense Center
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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