09 April 2008

Cyberdefence moves to the top of the Council of Europe/NATO agenda

Steve Gold

Cybercrime defence is at last receiving the attention it is due, following a multi-pronged series of initiatives orchestrated by the Council of Europe and NATO.

The Council of Europe has thrown its weight behind a series of guidelines designed to assist computer crime investigators in both the public and private sectors.
The guidelines are designed to build upon a cybercrime treaty drawn up by more than 40 countries, including the United States.

Controversially, the guidelines will seek to encourage a much closer level of co-operation between governments, their agencies and service providers. Critics are already stating their opposition to the plans, citing civil liberty and privacy issues.
The NATO initiative, meanwhile, lays the foundations for the creation of a central cyber-defence authority capable of overseeing national authorities such as CERT.

Outline plans for the authority are expected to be drawn up in May, at which officials will announce plans to recruit around 50 staff to staff the new global centre.
According to veteran IT security expert Peter Sommer, a visiting professor with the London School of Economics, the Council of Europe's strategy is the result of a high-level meeting between diplomats, heads of state and security experts in Bucharest in February of this year.

The event, said Sommer, came almost a year after the highly-publicised cyber-attacks on Estonian government computer systems and resulted in senior managers from several agencies agreeing to act on the problem of cyber-attacks.
Despite the high ranking nature of the Council of Europe and NATO's initiatives, Sommer said it is important to differentiate between a concerted attack on a government computer system and one that is orchestrated by a 16-year-old hacker.

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