Today, the European Union and NATO signed a Technical Arrangement between the NATO Computer Incident Response Capability (NCIRC) and the Computer Emergency Response Team – European Union (CERT-EU).
The agreement facilitates technical information sharing between NCIRC and CERT-EU to improve cyber incident prevention, detection and response in both organisations, in line with their decision making autonomy and procedures.
The signing of this agreement is an important milestone to implement the objectives of the EU Cyber Defence Policy Framework, which has set cooperation with NATO as one of its five priorities. Advanced incident response coordination allows for further development of practical cooperation and the sharing of best practice in cyber defence between the EU and NATO.
The EU-NATO cooperation in cyber security issues started in 2010, with high level staff-to-staff cyber defence consultations and informal meetings that now take place annually. NCIRC and CERT-EU have been cooperating since the creation of CERT-EU in 2011. The EU has been also observing the NATO annual cyber defence exercise, “Cyber Coalition”. Several informal cooperation initiatives have taken place between NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence and EU agencies.
The Technical Arrangement was signed at NATO Headquarters, ahead of the NATO Defence Ministers’ Meeting, by Head of CERT-EU Freddy Dezeure and Head of NCIRC Ian West, in the presence of the Deputy Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Pedro Serrano, and Assistant Secretary General of NATO, Sorin Ducaru.
