NCT Briefing: Cyber-espionage: Towards international cyber warfare?

In partnership with IB Consultancy, EU Reporter recently launched a series of free Non-Conventional Threat (NCT) Briefings in Brussels at the Aloft Brussels Schuman Hotel. The NCT Briefings are set to be a unique opportunity for the Brussels-based security and defence community to gather and keep up to date on salient present and future security threats that matter for the European Union.

The first briefing, which took place on 19 February, provided an update on worldwide security threats that matter for the EU based on open source intelligence. This threat overview paved the way for a vigorous exchange of views between the two guest speakers that did not a priori share a common ground on EU security and defence issues. Representatives from EU and national institutions, security and defence industries as well as a broad range of security and defence activists took part in a lively debate, before the audience was given a chance to debate with the eminent speakers.

Thomas Goorden (representative of the Belgian Pirate Party) and Albert J. Jongman (former senior strategic analyst for terrorism at the Dutch Ministry of Defence) were the guests, and raised the following question: 'Cyber-espionage: Towards international cyber warfare?'

The starting point of this briefing was the recent NSA and GCHQ espionage scandal against the European Union and its member states, and it then provided an overview of major international cyber security threats, along with the lessons learned from the scandal and way ahead, the means to address critical information networks vulnerabilities, data security and protection, defensive versus offensive cyber security/defence strategies and cyber terrorism.

EU Reporter will provide details ahead of the next briefing in March, followed by exclusive analysis.

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