South Korea joins NATO’s cyber defence group

In a move that will likely further stoke tensions with Moscow, South Korea has become the first Asian nation to join NATO’s cyber defence group Cooperative Cyber defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE), based in Tallinn, Estonia.

 

South Korea’s state intelligence agency National Intelligence Service (NIS), announced on Thursday, stating that it will represent South Korea in the centre’s training and research activities.

 

With Seoul’s admission, the group members have now risen to 32, including 27 NATO members. NATO established the CCDCOE in 2008 in response to an alleged Russian cyberattack that “crippled” Estonia’s state networks.

 

The cyber defence group serves as a knowledge hub, research institution, and training facility focused on interdisciplinary applied research, consulting, and exercises in cybersecurity. Over the years, it became an important part of the NATO effort to combat disinformation and malicious cyber-activity from the East.

 

In March, with a unanimous vote, 27 nations in the CCDCOE agreed to Ukraine’s membership as a contributing participant, alongside other non-NATO countries such as Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, and South Korea. Notably, in April, another non-NATO member, Finland, won the centre’s Locked Shields 2022 cyber defence exercise, involving dozens of squads, thousands of virtualized systems, and “live-fire” digital attacks.