Cyber Defense Policy and Action Plan

Overview
NATO's Cyber Defense Policy and Action Plan reflects the steps the Alliance has taken to mature its cyber capabilities. These steps aim to enhance the political and operational mechanism of NATO's response capability and expand training and assistance to improve defenses of Alliance national militaries. The main elements of the new approach include:


 * 1. Realization that cyber defense is required to perform NATO's core tasks of collective defense and crisis management;
 * 2. Prevention, resilience, and defense of cyber assets critical to NATO and its constituent Allies;
 * 3. Implementation of robust cyber defense capabilities and centralized protection of NATO's own networks;
 * 4. Definition of minimum requirements for cyber defense of national networks critical to NATO's core tasks;
 * 5. Assistance to the Allies to achieve a minimum level of cyber defense to reduce vulnerabilities of national critical infrastructure; and
 * 6. Engagement with partners, other international organizations, the private sector, and academia.

Source

 * Atlantic Counsel Issue Brief, NATO’s Cyber Capabilities: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, at 3 (full-text).