The Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence is an important institution for the Alliance, providing a space for Allied and Partner Nations to collaborate on cyber-operations issues. The Centre is at the forefront of fostering innovative doctrinal development and training in an ever-growing sphere of importance.
The Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence is located in Tallinn, Estonia, and is integral to innovating Alliance capabilities in the ever-growing cyber domain. The Centre is the largest Centre of Excellence – sponsored by every member of the Alliance and receives contributions from an additional eight Partner Nations, including new members Iceland, Japan, Ireland and Ukraine, who were welcomed by the Centre earlier this year. With such wide participation, the Centre highlights the goals of the Centre of Excellence programme by fostering collaboration between Allied and Partner Nations on a vitally important line of effort. The Centre’s persistent effort to conduct active exercises that expose vulnerabilities and provide a depth of lessons learned push forward the Alliance’s ability to educate and train its personnel on cyber-related initiatives. These efforts in turn contribute to the readiness of forces and resiliency of systems across the Alliance’s ecosystem in an important domain of operations.
The Centre hosts two annual exercises: CROSSED SWORDS and LOCKED SHIELDS. These exercises are interactive, real-world simulations that allow the Alliance’s cyber security subject matter experts to enhance their skills in defending the Alliance’s critical infrastructure. The LOCKED SHIELDS exercise, which occurred in April 2023, included 38 countries, 5500 participating systems, and over 30 international organizations, industries and academic partners. This exercise sought to test defensive cyber operations and digital forensics while also fostering multi-national coordination. The CROSSED SWORDS exercise, which will take place in December 2023, will pick up where LOCKED SHIELDS left off and focus on offensive cyber operations that integrate with kinetic operations. This exercise will include participants from 21 countries and 400 systems. Both events are important elements for the Centre’s mission of providing real-life experience for Alliance stakeholders while also fostering integration among both Allied and Partner Nations.
Over the Centre’s 16 years of existence, it has repeatedly defined and developed cyber doctrine and norms across the Alliance through the creation of the Tallinn Manual. The Manual addresses the most pressing cyber concerns and sets international precedents for states’ rights to exercise self-defence. Furthermore, the Manual also delivers doctrinal guidance as it seeks to determine the levels of cyber incidents that necessitate the use of force. These advances in doctrine and international norms have solidified the Manual as a key resource for legal advisors and policy experts dealing in cyber issues. Viewed as the Centre’s flagship research initiative, the Centre is currently drafting the Tallinn Manual 3.0.
In addition to the creation of manuals for both civilian and military stakeholders, the Centre also hosts the annual International Conference on Cyber Conflict, also known as CyCon. Over the 15 years of CyCon activities, the Conference has established itself as a prominent platform for multidisciplinary discussions of cyber security trends, threats and overall community building. Over 600 key personnel attend CyCon from nearly 50 countries, providing a range of opinions and perspectives that allow for diverse and thought provoking seminar sessions. Cycon also allows the Centre to interface with experts in academia, industry and government, which has become a key focus of the Allied Command Transformation’s quest for greater interoperability in multi-domain operations.
NATO-accredited Centres of Excellence are (multi-) nationally established and sponsored entities, which offer recognized expertise and experience within a defined subject matter area to the benefit of the Alliance. Centres of Excellence are not part of the NATO Command Structure, but form part of the wider framework that contributes to the functioning of the Alliance. Headquarters Supreme Allied Commander Transformation coordinates the activities of the Centres of Excellence, ensuring that their outputs align with Allied Command Transformation’s Programme of Work. For more information about NATO-accredited Centres of Excellence, see the 2023 Centres of Excellence Catalogue.
