The case for NATO-EU cooperation in the protection of cyberspace

No actor can counter the cyber threat in isolation: its asymmetric and borderless nature requires a cooperative governance system, in which public and private actors integrate instruments of information-sharing, early-warning, forensic analysis, system resilience and recovery. Through international cooperation, like-minded actors reduce the risk of miscalculation and escalation, facilitate the emergence of international norms and rules of behaviour, enhance resilience in the event of major cyber crisis, avoid duplication of efforts and facilitate economies of scale in defence spending, and improve actionable attribution of cyber attacks at the international level. The seriousness of the threat, along with the broadened EU´s mandate on Common Foreign and Security Policy, makes the coordination with NATO´s well established cyber defence policies and tools a pressing matter. This coordination would strengthen situational awareness throughout transatlantic networks, facilitate the engagement of the private sector, outline minimum security standards requirements, allow for common education & training strategies and standards, leverage civilian-military capabilities of both Organizations, and enable of a set of coherent and non-overlapping crisis-management procedures. Cyber defence is a new foreign and security policy area, in which new norms and behaviours need to emerge and to be widely recognized, and clear responsibilities identified. In addition to mounting operational cyber capabilities, it is also important to invest at the institutional level, bringing into play political and diplomatic skills and tools to forge common approaches to cyberspace and foster States´ and International Organization´s cooperation.