NATO ministers get to grips with cyber defence

NATO defence ministers last week spent at least minutes on the question of cyber defence ahead of the Bucharest summit meetings planned for next year.

The "informal Defence Ministers meeting" took place in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, on Wednesday and Thursday last week. The planned agenda had issues of cyber warfare to be discussed on Thursday morning, along with missile defence, force transformation, and various other matters. In civilised style, the conflab was scheduled to wrap up in time for lunch and a nice long weekend.

The Chinese Xinhua news agency quoted Alliance spokesman James Appathurai on Thursday as saying that:

"There is a growing consensus within NATO that the alliance could add value [to cyber defence of its member states] and should define exactly where it can add value."

NATO itself reported that the informal meetings had taken place, and that "Missile defence, cyber defence, elements of energy security were identified as issues where important work will be undertaken in preparation for the NATO summit in Bucharest in April next year".

Computing.co.uk, curiously, asserts today that "Nato defence ministers met in the Netherlands on Friday last week to discuss issues of cyber defence". ®