Atlantic Council

In “Strategic Cyber Early Warning: A Phased Adaptive Approach for NATO," a paper from the Smarter Alliance Initiative, Jason Healey, director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, and Leendert van Bochoven, NATO and European Defense leader at IBM, formulate steps for NATO to improve its cyber warning system. Both agree that NATO could have a credible cyber Distant Early Warning Line in the near future if its leadership were to approach the problem incrementally rather than waiting for the perfect solution. The Alliance is on the right track with its recent investments in monitoring, but this should be seen as the first step in a Phased Adaptive Approach for cyber defense.

Smarter Alliance Initiative

The Smarter Alliance Initiative was established in response to Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s call for NATO members to adopt a “smart defense” approach to leveraging scarce resources to develop and sustain capabilities necessary to meet current and future security challenges in an age of austerity. Working with recognized experts and former senior officials from Europe and the United States, the Atlantic Council and IBM have produced a set of policy-oriented briefs focused on NATO reform and cyber security, with the aim to provide thought leadership and innovative policy-relevant solutions for NATO’s continued organizational reform and role in cyber security.