After last year’s denial of the formal membership to the North Atlantic Alliance’s (NATO) cooperative cyber centre of excellence (CCDOE), the Ukrainian government officials announced that they still want a closer collaboration.
It is very challenging - if not impossible - to predict what exactly is going to happen in the next twelve months. At the present, Nostradamus is not listed among the authors of Finabel. However, it is possible to outline some of the main themes of discussion and to point out some possible trends. It is important to stress that the quite normally some of the main themes that will be delineated in this article will be overtaken and made superfluous by unpredictable events. Nonetheless, here at Finabel we believe that these might be some interesting topics, which stimulates discussions and debates regarding possible implications that fall well beyond 2022.
In a digital world, the hybrid attack has become a recurrent occurrence. To be prepared to fight cyber threats, the European Union (EU) had first to understand this new form of attack and how dangerous it could be. After the Estonian cyberattack of 2007, the need for a response plan able to satisfy national and European defence expectations brought the debate of cybersecurity to the centre of defence and security policies. The techno- logical advances brought by the internet and electronic devices have become a fundamen- tal part of our daily lives. These technological changes have transformed the way we communicate today and have directly impacted how countries handle defence and security strategies.
The security of the cybersphere, both on a national and international level, has always been threatened by the actions and crimes committed by malicious cyber operators. The sophistication and the potential pervasiveness of their cyber threats have attracted the attention of various States and international organisations, including the European Union (EU) and NATO, prompting further cooperation and the provision of effective legal instruments for the protection of cyberspace and its users.
Over the last few years, many EU documents on cybersecurity have been published (Falessi, 2012, 2-6). The European Security Strategy included cyber threats as a new risk to European security (Klimburg, ed. 2011, 5-11). The EU is active in two cybersecurity areas. The first area consists of the necessary measures applied to combat cyberattacks, including cybercrimes. The second area consists of applying the necessary measures to support critical infrastructure protection and network security. The Common Foreign and Security Policy of cyber issues is underdeveloped, mainly due to the difficulties in approaching the subject. According to a European Parliament Study, cyber issues are perceived to be a matter often left to member states (MS).
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