Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence

NATO CCD COE, officially the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (K5 or NATO küberkaitsekoostöö keskus) 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. The Centre conducts research and training on cyber security and includes a staff of approximately 40 persons.

History
In 2003, prior to the country’s official accession to NATO, Estonia proposed the creation of a "cyber excellence center". 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".

The need for a cyber-defence centre to be opened today is compelling. It will help NATO defy and successfully counter the threats in this area.

Overview
The Cyber Defence Center in Tallinn is one of 18 accredited Centres of Excellence (COEs), 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:
 * improve cyber defence interoperability within the NATO Network Enabled Capability (NNEC) environment,
 * design the doctrine and concept development and their validation,
 * enhance information security and cyber defence education, awareness, and training,
 * provide cyber defence support for experimentation (including on-site) for experimentation,
 * analyze the legal aspects of cyber defence.

The centre has also other responsibilities which include:
 * contribution to development of Cyber Defence Center practices and standards with NATO, PfP, NATO candidates and non-NATO nations,
 * contribution to development of NATO security policies related to cyber defence its definition of scope and responsibility of military in cyber defence,
 * carrying out cyber defence-focused training, awareness campaigns, workshops, and courses,
 * developing and conducting cyber defence-focused exercises and its ability to provide CD exercise support,
 * providing cyber defence SMEs to NATO and its ability in cyber defence testing and validating.

Current status
There are currently 11 countries involved within the centre:
 * 🇪🇪 estonia
 * 🇩🇪 germany
 * 🇮🇹 italy
 * 🇱🇻 latvia
 * 🇱🇹 lithuania
 * 🇵🇱 poland
 * 🇸🇰 slovakia
 * 🇪🇸 spain
 * 🇭🇺 hungary
 * 🇺🇸 united states
 * 🇳🇱 netherlands

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.

Membership at the NATO CCD COE is open to all NATO nations. Turkey, France and United Kingdom are expected to join by 2014. Additionally Iceland has also shown interest in joining the NATO CCD COE.

NATO CCD COE can also establish cooperative relations with non-NATO nations, universities, research institutions, and businesses as Contributing Participants.