– Annual exercise Cyber Coalition, NATO’s flagship cyber defence exercise and one of the largest in the world, has begun in Tallinn, Estonia and will continue until Dec. 1, 2023.
The 2023 iteration aims to enhance NATO, Allies and partners’ resilience to cyber threats and their ability to conduct cyber operations together. The exercise is based on challenging, realistic scenarios that help prepare cyber defenders for real-life cyber challenges – including attacks on critical national infrastructure, as well as disruption of NATO and allied assets while on operations.
Exercise Director Commander Charles Elliott briefs participants during Cyber Coalition 2022 in Tallinn, Estonia. - NATO Photo by Allied Command Transformation
“Cyber Coalition 2023 will improve participants ability to identify, analyse and stop highly complex malware,” said Exercise Director Commander Charles Elliott. “Due to the escalation of sophisticated cyber-attacks, it is imperative to continually improve coordination and collaboration between nations and national cyber defence proficiencies and this is what Cyber Coalition is designed to do.”
“Testing our capabilities, in realistic scenarios, will not only hone our procedures and test our capabilities, it will result in better defence of NATO allies and partners,” Elliott added.
Cyber Coalition 2023 involves 1000 cyber defenders from 28 NATO Allies, as well as 7 Partner countries, the EU, and participants from industry and academia. It is executed from Cyber Range 14 in the Estonian capital, which can be utilised to simulate a realistic network infrastructure.