Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence


NATO CCD COE, officially the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence is one of NATO Centres of Excellence, located in Tallinn, Estonia. The Centre was established on 14 May 2008, it received full accreditation by NATO and attained the status of International Military Organisation on 28 October 2008. NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence is an International Military Organisation with a mission to enhance the capability, cooperation and information sharing among NATO, its member nations and partners in cyber defence by virtue of education, research and development, lessons learned and consultation.

History

In 2003, prior to the country's official accession to NATO, Estonia proposed the creation of a Centre of Excellence. The 2006 Riga summit listed possible cyber attacks among the asymmetric threats to the common security and acknowledged the need for programs to protect information systems over the long term. The cyber attacks on Estonia in 2007 highlighted for the first time the potential vulnerability of any NATO countries, their institutions and societies, and even NATO itself to disruption or penetration of their information and communications systems.
Estonia's proposals for a NATO cyber excellence center received strong support from the alliance's Secretary-General "Jaap" de Hoop Scheffer. NATO completed an assessment of the situation, partly in light of Estonia's experience, in April 2007, and approved a NATO policy on cyber defence in January 2008. NATO's summit communiqué in Bucharest in April announced NATO's readiness to "provide a capability to assist allied nations, upon request, to counter a cyber attack".
On August 30, 2018, Colonel Jaak Tarien replaced Merle Maigre as the Director of the organisation.

Overview

The Cyber Defence Center in Tallinn is one of 21 accredited Centres of Excellence, for training on technically sophisticated aspects of NATO operations. It is being funded nationally and multi-nationally as these centers are closely linked with Allied Command Transformation and promote the alliance-approved transformation goals.
The main agenda of the facility is to:
The centre has also other responsibilities which include:
Currently, 22 Sponsoring Nations have joined the Centre:
In addition, the Centre has three contributing participants:
NATO CCD COE's Founding Nations are Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Spain. Hungary, Poland, the United States and the Netherlands joined in the following years. In 2014, France, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, and Austria as the first non-Nato country joined the centre. In November 2015, Finland, Greece and Turkey joined. In June 2019, Bulgaria, Denmark, Norway and Romania joined.
Membership at the NATO CCD COE is open to all NATO nations. NATO CCD COE can also establish cooperative relations with non-NATO nations, universities, research institutions, and businesses as Contributing Participants.