Written by Vasiliki Psychogiou                                                                                            

Cyberspace has become the fifth battle space in an increasingly complex security landscape, and cyber threats have been part of the international security arena. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has tackled cyber threats for over a decade. NATO’s awareness towards cyber threats started rising in the late 1990s, following cyber-attacks by Serbian hackers against NATO Supreme Command’s (SHAPE) website during the bombing campaign on Serbian positions as part of the response to the violence in Kosovo*
in 1999. The cyber-attacks against Estonia in 2007 and in the context of the conflict in Georgia in 2008 urged the Alliance to take these new threats seriously. NATO is today the most advanced international organisation regarding cyber defence.