Brussels - Estonia signed a deal with six other NATO members Wednesday to make it the military alliance's leading expert on internet-based warfare, in a move seen as recognizing its surviving a major web-based attack a year ago. The attack "clarified a lot of thinking about what the actual vulnerabilities were and allowed an increased emphasis" on the issue, said NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, General James Mattis.
At a ceremony at NATO's headquarters in Brussels, Estonia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Germany, Italy, Spain, Slovakia, Lithuania and Latvia in which the seven countries agreed to fund and man a cyber-defence research and training centre in Tallinn.
"Having many nations and different viewpoints is crucial for the success of the centre. The cyber threat often takes the form of a network: therefore, our defence should also be based on a network," Estonian Chief of Defence General Ants Laaneots said.
The ceremony paves the way for NATO as a whole to recognize the centre as a "centre of excellence" and to use it as a main source of cyber-defence expertise. Full NATO accreditation is expected by the end of the year, officials said.
"Missiles are no longer needed to shut down infrastructure; this can be achieved in cyberspace. Therefore, we must be innovative in our defence," Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves told Deutsche Presse-Agentur
