Cyberteams from an array of NATO members have collaborated on an exercise to reduce cyber vulnerabilities across the alliance’s “forward land forces” in Eastern Europe.
The UK and Poland led Exercise Baltic Mule, which also involved Canada, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania and the USA. It was billed as the first cyber mission assurance exercise focused on forward land forces in Eastern Europe and is intended to ensure military supply plans are secure.
According to an MoD statement, “Military experts from all the nations involved spent three days analysing potential threats to supply lines and communication systems, resulting in a comprehensive list of solutions and advice to address these threats.”
These will be used to refine plans for the forward land forces, with recommendations being presented at the next Cyber Commanders Forum in September.
While NATO addresses an array of threats, the most immediate is that from Russia. The alliance has steadily built up its commitments to its members in Eastern Europe since the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014.
Russia has kept up a steady stream of attacks on Western infrastructure for the last decade or more, as well as using cyber as an adjunct to real-world kinetic warfare – its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2021 was accompanied by wiper attacks and attempts to knock out communications in the country.
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NATO is presumably hypervigilant about similar activity ticking up around its assets in Eastern Europe. At the same time, it will be keen to ensure that its own operations in Eastern Europe, and further afield, are not compromised by Russian cyber-spies.
Last week, the alliance laid out extensive plans to beef up its overall cyber operations, including tighter integration of space into its plans, more focus on critical infrastructure, and the establishment of a NATO Integrated Cyber Defence Centre “to enhance network protection, situational awareness… and developing a policy to augment the security of NATO’s networks”.
But that is not the only clear and present cyber danger facing the continent. Last week, research firm IDC warned that the Paris Olympics faces the “most complex threat landscape, the largest ecosystem of threat actors, and the highest degree of ease for threat actors to execute attacks” compared to any previous Olympics.
The organization predicted that cybersecurity spending in the country will increase by $94m this year as a result of the games. Across the rest of Europe, cybersecurity spending will increase by $57m as a result of the Paris sports fest.
IDC’s prediction included purely criminal behaviour, with criminals taking advantage of distracted citizens and businesses to ply their trade, as well as other types of attacks. The country has already been hit by major attacks already this year.
“We can expect to see an unprecedented level of threats launched during the Paris Olympic Games supporting a variety of financial and political motives targeting not only the Olympic Games but also unrelated organizations," said Richard Thurston, research manager for European security services at IDC.
