MOSCOW, November 26 (RIA Novosti) – NATO countries and partner nations on Tuesday started large-scale cyber defense exercises aimed at testing the alliance’s ability to fend off cyber attacks against its computer networks, the Estonian Defense Ministry said.
The three-day Cyber Coalition 2013 exercise involves some 400 IT and legal experts, as well as government officials from 27 NATO nations and officials from Finland, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland, making it Europe’s largest cyber exercise to date in terms of the number of participating countries.
“The exercise is being conducted from the Estonian National Defense College training center in Tartu,” the ministry said on its website.
The Estonian Defense Ministry earlier said the country would develop, lead and at least partially host an EU-wide project to develop member states’ abilities to fend off cyber attacks.
The project, to be implemented as part of the EU’s common security and defense policy, was approved by the European Defense Agency last week.
Estonia has been advocating the establishment of international cyber security forces since 2007 after a series of targeted online attacks disrupted the operation of some of Estonia’s most important web services.
Estonian authorities accused Russia of staging the “cyber assaults,” but Moscow repudiated those accusations as ungrounded.
According to Russia’s Kommersant business daily, NATO officials have admitted in private conversations that they consider Russia, China and Iran as the main potential cyber aggressors.
