The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) announced today that Sven Sakkov has been appointed as its new director.
Sakkov on Thursday will officially take the place of Colonel Artur Suzik of the Estonian Defense Forces, who has been leading the CCDCOE since 2012.
Before being named director of NATO’s cyber security center, Sakkov was the undersecretary for defense policy in the Estonian Ministry of Defence, where he coordinated policy planning and international cooperation since 2008. Before that, the CCDCOE’s new director served as defence counsellor at the Estonian Embassy in Washington, and as director of the Estonian Ministry of Defence’s policy planning department.
The NATO CCDCOE is a Tallinn, Estonia-based international military organization that focuses on enhancing the cyber defense capabilities of NATO members and partners, and improving the way they share information on cyber threats. The organization is staffed and financed by sponsoring nations and contributing participants.
Current sponsoring nations include the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Spain. Sweden and Austria have joined the center as contributing participants, the status for non-NATO members.
The NATO CCDCOE is the organizer of the CyCon conference and Locked Shield, considered the world’s largest real-time network defence exercise.